Sheepdog Driven Algorithm for Sheep Herd Transport

So far, most of the existing works on swarm systems are concerned with the collective motions. In this work, a somehow reverse problem is investigated, i.e., how an agent can interact with/control a swarm system. In particular, we consider the sheep herd transport problem: a herd of sheep is driven by a single sheepdog from the start place to the sheepfold. The rules governing the behaviors of the sheep are preset and known to the sheepdog, and the objective is to design the rule for the sheepdog to fulfil the transport task. Inspired by the behaviors of true sheepdogs, we have developed a backward semi-circle reciprocation algorithm featuring dynamic turn-around point selection. Numerical results are provided to evaluate the proposed algorithm.