Jellyfish Swarm: Flocking & Jet Propulsion (2D)

Swarm Size & Vision

Population 28

Perception radius 90 px

Flocking Weights

Cohesion 1.00

Separation 1.20

Alignment 0.90

Jet Propulsion

Pulse rate 1.00 Hz

Live Readout

Elapsed time

0.0 s

Avg. speed

0.0 px/s

Alignment order

0.00

Mean neighbor dist.

0.0 px

How it works

Each jellyfish is a boid steered by three local rules (Reynolds, 1987), evaluated only against neighbors inside the perception radius:

separation: steer away from neighbors closer than a minimum gap
alignment:  steer toward the average heading of nearby neighbors
cohesion:   steer toward the average position of nearby neighbors

On top of that, every jellyfish runs its own jet-propulsion cycle: the bell contracts and relaxes at the pulse rate, and during the contraction half of the cycle a real forward thrust F = k·max(0, sin φ) is added along its current heading — the same mechanism real jellyfish use to swim, layered on top of the flocking steering rather than replacing it.

Alignment order — the magnitude of the mean normalized velocity vector (0 = random headings, 1 = perfectly synchronized swimming), the standard Vicsek order parameter for a flock.
Mean neighbor dist. — average distance to each jellyfish's nearest neighbor; falls as cohesion pulls the swarm tighter, rises as separation pushes it apart.

Jellyfish (color = phase) Perception radius (selected)