Vehicles: experiments in group behavior

Abstract: Braitenberg Vehicles is a concept, often used in robotics, which can be used to generate complex behavior from simple rules. Earlier research on the topic often uses this concept to model or analyze single agent behavior, but in this study, groups of Vehicles interacting with each other were simulated in a two dimensional torus-shaped arena. Some problems with arbitrarily defined base rules for the simulation appeared during the construction of the model. These problems introduced some uncertainties in the results, but in spite of this, different group configurations of Vehicles were studied systematically, and distinct identifiable behavior in the form of states of equilibrium and movement patterns were found for multiple of these configurations. Connections were made to existing research on flock behavior where similarities in the recorded behavior were identified. The hope is for this study to pave the way for future work in the area of group behavior modeling using Braitenberg Vehicles.