A model of collective behavior based purely on vision*

Classical models of collective behavior often take a “bird’s-eye perspective,” assuming that individuals have access to social information not directly encoded in their sensory input. Despite the explanatory success of those models, it is now thought that a better understanding needs to incorporate the perception of the individual, i.e., how internal and external information are acquired and processed. In particular, vision has appeared to be a central feature to gather external information and influence the collective organization of the group. Here, we show that a simple vision-based model of collective behavior is sufficient to generate organized collective movements in the absence of any spatial representation. Our work suggests a different approach for the development of purely vision-based autonomous swarm robotic systems and formulates a mathematical framework for exploration of perception-based interactions and how they differ from physical ones.