Automated boats

Evening all,

Although not Artificial Life, I thought you might be interested in hearing about my experiments with automated ships and boats.

I have some early experiments in the void sim to the east of Lane (sorry, forgot what its called).

Recently I've been experimenting with collision avoidance on small yachts.

I found that one problem was trying not to react to moving objects that were not a hazard due to the direction they where moving in. So I've been concentrating on improving their ability to decide whether or not they are going to collide with another moving object. I'm pretty pleased with the results so far, I can keep 6 or so 3 meter yachts randomly moving around a sim with perhaps one collision every five minutes

At the moment, the only evasive manouver is a simple turn to the left what ever the situation. This can sometimes cause collisions and is the area I'm going to be concentrating on next.

You can see a small fleet of the current version in the void sim Wauaria. If you see different colour sails, they will be different versions.

Rough Alogorithm
A yacht randomly selects a spot in the sim and turns to it.
If it detects another object, usually another yacht in the void sim, it decides whether or not it thinks its going to collide.
If it is going to collide, it turn 90 degress left and holds that course for 3 seconds. If during that three seconds it spots another hazard, it turns again and starts another three seconds.
If the three second timer finishes, or it detects no objects at all, it changes course back to the orginal waypoint.
When it reaches a waypoint, it picks another.

I've been putting down some notes in the Scripting Wiki.

Brilliant work. Flocking and obstacle avoidance (particularly among bats) definitely counts. Waypoint navigation is used by insects, such as honey bees, who often exhibit similar behaviour when hitting temporary obstacles, like people standing in front of the hive.

Thanks DoctorMike,

I've been tweaking them a bit. A spinnaker appears now when they are moving at top speed and the colour of the mainsail changes to show whether or not the have spotted a hazard. I'm tryng to get a better idea of what they are doing in practice.

If you dont know it, you may be interested in Craig Reynoldshome page. Craig Reynolds invented the Flocking algorithm and his page provides information on a vareity of steering behaviours.