A variant of boids rules: Reducing jerky motion through eliminating heading disturbance

The angular disorder leading the jerky motion of robots in flocking is a result of continuously alternating cohesion and separation behaviours. In this paper, we present a variant Boids rules for flocking with the primary aim of eliminating the heading disturbance (EHD). Specifically, a free area is added between cohesion and separation areas and the new rules are set according to sensing partition. Thanks to the free area, alignment control is purely managed without the influence of the heading disturbance caused by cohesion and separation. With the new Boids rules, the aggregation rate can be controlled by a single cohesion factor α. The simulation results confirmed the effectiveness of the new rules through measuring the angular and positional disorders of robots in flocking.