Swarm Intelligence and AI, Self-Driving Cars As Boids, Easily Explained

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

Birds exhibit swarm intelligence behaviors, so too will driverless autonomous cars

There was a dog on the freeway the other day.

I’ve seen a lot of items scattered on the freeways during my daily commute, including lawn chairs, ladders, pumpkins (a truck carrying Halloween pumpkins had gotten into an accident and spilled its load of pumpkin patch pumpkins), and whatever else can seem to drop onto, spill into, or wander along on the freeway.

A live animal is always an especially big concern on the freeway. Besides the danger to the animal, there is also usually heightened danger to the freeway drivers. The likely erratic behavior of the animal can cause drivers to make mistakes and ram into other cars. Also, invariably some good Samaritans try to get out of their cars and corral the animal on the freeway. This puts those well intended humans into danger too from errant car drivers.

Anyway, in this case, I watched in amazement as my fellow drivers all seemed to work cooperatively with each other. Cars nearest to the dog were careful to give it some distance so that it would not be scared into bolting further along on the freeway. Cars next to those cars were trying to run interference by moving into positions that would force other cars to go widely around the protected pocket. Cars at the outer layers…