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The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'

Patterns of collective motion in bird flocks, fish schools and human crowds are believed to emerge from local interactions between individuals. Most ‘flocking' models attribute these local interactions to hypothetical rules or metaphorical forces and assume an omniscient third-person view of th...

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Autores principales: Dachner, Gregory C., Wirth, Trenton D., Richmond, Emily, Warren, William H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8889174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35232235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2089
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author Dachner, Gregory C.
Wirth, Trenton D.
Richmond, Emily
Warren, William H.
author_facet Dachner, Gregory C.
Wirth, Trenton D.
Richmond, Emily
Warren, William H.
author_sort Dachner, Gregory C.
collection PubMed
description Patterns of collective motion in bird flocks, fish schools and human crowds are believed to emerge from local interactions between individuals. Most ‘flocking' models attribute these local interactions to hypothetical rules or metaphorical forces and assume an omniscient third-person view of the positions and velocities of all individuals in space. We develop a visual model of collective motion in human crowds based on the visual coupling that governs pedestrian interactions from a first-person embedded viewpoint. Specifically, humans control their walking speed and direction by cancelling the average angular velocity and optical expansion/contraction of their neighbours, weighted by visibility (1 − occlusion). We test the model by simulating data from experiments with virtual crowds and real human ‘swarms'. The visual model outperforms our previous omniscient model and explains basic properties of interaction: ‘repulsion' forces reduce to cancelling optical expansion, ‘attraction' forces to cancelling optical contraction and ‘alignment' to cancelling the combination of expansion/contraction and angular velocity. Moreover, the neighbourhood of interaction follows from Euclid's Law of perspective and the geometry of occlusion. We conclude that the local interactions underlying human flocking are a natural consequence of the laws of optics. Similar perceptual principles may apply to collective motion in other species.
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spelling pubmed-88891742022-03-25 The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking' Dachner, Gregory C. Wirth, Trenton D. Richmond, Emily Warren, William H. Proc Biol Sci Behaviour Patterns of collective motion in bird flocks, fish schools and human crowds are believed to emerge from local interactions between individuals. Most ‘flocking' models attribute these local interactions to hypothetical rules or metaphorical forces and assume an omniscient third-person view of the positions and velocities of all individuals in space. We develop a visual model of collective motion in human crowds based on the visual coupling that governs pedestrian interactions from a first-person embedded viewpoint. Specifically, humans control their walking speed and direction by cancelling the average angular velocity and optical expansion/contraction of their neighbours, weighted by visibility (1 − occlusion). We test the model by simulating data from experiments with virtual crowds and real human ‘swarms'. The visual model outperforms our previous omniscient model and explains basic properties of interaction: ‘repulsion' forces reduce to cancelling optical expansion, ‘attraction' forces to cancelling optical contraction and ‘alignment' to cancelling the combination of expansion/contraction and angular velocity. Moreover, the neighbourhood of interaction follows from Euclid's Law of perspective and the geometry of occlusion. We conclude that the local interactions underlying human flocking are a natural consequence of the laws of optics. Similar perceptual principles may apply to collective motion in other species. The Royal Society 2022-03-09 2022-03-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8889174/ /pubmed/35232235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2089 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Behaviour
Dachner, Gregory C.
Wirth, Trenton D.
Richmond, Emily
Warren, William H.
The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title_full The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title_fullStr The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title_full_unstemmed The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title_short The visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
title_sort visual coupling between neighbours explains local interactions underlying human ‘flocking'
topic Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8889174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35232235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.2089
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