Collision avoidance is essential for the day to day life of animals. Their survival needs compel them to move around constantly. To be able to do so safely, an animal's perception must first provide an account for collision detection.
Analogous to all animals and humans, the avoidance of collisions with
obstacles is a primitive behavior that an artificial fish performs.
Once a static obstacle or another fish comes into view, the artificial
fish must determine if there is potential for a collision and, if so,
act to avoid the collision. As will be shown in
Chapter 
, the collision detection algorithms
described below support the realistic modeling of collision avoidance
and hence is essential for the realistic modeling of the artificial
fish's behavior on the whole.
Figure: Swimming fishes avoiding collisions with cylindrical obstacles.
| Xiaoyuan Tu | January 1996 |