The Convergence of Bird Flocking
Bernard Chazelle · Journal of the ACM · 2014
We bound the time it takes for a group of birds to stabilize in a standard flocking model. Each bird averages its velocity with its neighbors lying within a fixed radius. We resolve the worst-case complexity of this natural algorithm by providing asymptotically tight bounds on the time to equilibrium. We reduce the problem to two distinct questions in computational geometry and circuit complexity.