A visual lab for swarm learning
Turning scientific swarm rules
into a playful interface where you
explore, experiment, and
understand by interacting.
Get Started
Fish move as a
glittering wall.
Insects vibrate
like a living
cloud.
Birds draw
shapes into
the sky.
What are Boids?
Boids are simple digital creatures that follow just a few local
rules: keep some distance, stay with the group, and align
your direction. Together, these tiny decisions create the
flowing movement of a swarm. The idea was introduced by
computer graphics researcher Craig Reynolds in 1986 as a
way to simulate flocking birds.
How does it work?
Each creature in the swarm looks at the movement directions
of its neighbours and computes an average velocity direction
from them. This mean direction iconfont gently pulls it along –
creating the shared “flowing along together” of the swarm.
learning the principles of collective behavior step by step.
Scroll, tweak parameters,
and watch how the
visualization responds.
Get Started
Swarm Lab is a student project by Celina Erler, Isabel Ares Bittner and Jeanette
Schweiger at TH Nürnberg, Faculty of Design. Created within the framework of the
research project “Disruption in Creativity” (disruption-in-creativity.de).