Shepherding via Deformable Shapes

Joseph F. Harrison Christopher Vo Jyh-Ming Lien

Abstract— In this paper, we present a new motion planning

strategy for shepherding in environments containing obstacles.
This instance of the group motion control problem is applicable
to a wide variety of real life scenarios, such as animal herding,
civil crowd control, and oil-spill cleanup. The problem is
challenging in terms of scalability and robustness because it
is dynamic, highly underactuated, and involves multi-agent
coordination.
Our previous work showed that high-level probabilistic
motion planning algorithms combined with simple shepherd-
ing behaviors can be beneficial in situations where low-level
behaviors alone are insufficient.
(a) (b)
In this paper, we present a hybrid behavior called D EFORM,
in which the shepherds view the flock as an abstracted de-
formable shape. We show that our method is more robust than
our previous approach and that it scales more effectively to
larger teams of shepherds and larger flocks.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Group motion control is the problem of moving a group
of agents in coordination. An instance of this problem is
shepherding, where the objective is to herd a group of agents
(e.g. a flock of sheep, crowd of people, etc.) using one or
more “shepherd” agents (e.g. shepherds, riot police, etc.).
The objective of shepherding is typically to guide the group
to a goal, though other variants exist (e.g. escort or protection
- a “parent” tries to maintain separation between their “child”
and “stranger” [1]). A solution to the shepherding problem is
usually a sequence of movements the shepherd can perform
to guide the group to the goal. This sequence may be the
output of a high-level motion planner, the result of agent-
based behaviors working independently or in coordination to
achieve high-level commands, or some combination thereof.
Our recent work [2] showed that high-level planning
combined with low-level shepherding behaviors can be an
effective approach to guiding flocks amongst certain kinds
of obstacles. However, the results were inconsistent, and
on environments with narrow corridors and multiple paths
to the goal, our simplest method, “Medial Axis Graph-
Based” (M AGB) outperformed the planning-based methods
when given a fixed budget of simulation steps. However,
M AGB does not scale well to larger flocks or larger teams
of shepherds.
Main results This paper introduces a new approach to
shepherding called D EFORM, which is a hybrid of behavior-
based shepherd motions and low-level planning. The method
relies on an abstraction of the flock as a discretized de-
formable shape or “blob”. We have chosen this abstraction
All authors are with Department of Computer Science, George Mason
University, 4400 University Drive MSN 4A5, Fairfax, VA 22030 USA,
{jharri1, cvo1, jmlien}@cs.gmu.edu
(c) (d)
Fig. 1. Snap shots (a-d) of 15 shepherds successfully herding a
large flock with 200 members exhibiting simple flocking behaviors
from one plaza to another in a street like environment.
for several reasons. First, it more accurately represents the
contour of the flock than simpler representations such as
spheres or bounding boxes. Second, it favors areas of the
search space where there is enough clearance for the blobs
to pass through.
Our experiments show that D EFORM broadly outperforms
our previous method (M AGB) in terms of robustness (higher
success rate), and scalability (effective for larger flocks and
larger teams of shepherds).
II. R ELATED W ORK
The group motion control problem is one that merges
the simulation and modeling of multi-agent dynamics with
cooperation, planning, and control. There is a large body
of work on the dynamics and modeling of human crowds,
but there is still very little work on swarm motion control
via agent interactions, and no work has been proposed to
systematically study group motion control as a whole.
Works that explore the crowd control problem have used
a variety of simple approaches such as introducing new
objects or agents into the environment. For example, the
effect of adding barriers into disaster scenario environments
was studied in [3]. Other works have attempted to model the
effect of adding agents with various social forces. The effect
of adding robots with attractive social forces was examined
in [4], and crowd dynamics in the presence of “leader”
individuals was modeled in [5].
There are several works in robotics and computer ani-
mation related to modeling behaviors such as shepherding.
For example, Schultz et al. [6] applied a genetic algorithm
to learn rules for a shepherd robot. Its objective was to
control the movement of other robots (sheep) that react by
moving away from the shepherd. Vaughan et al. [7] simulated
and constructed a robot that shepherds a flock of geese
in a circular environment. In computer animation, Funge
et al. [8] simulated an interesting shepherding behavior in
which a T. Rex chases raptors out of its territory. Potter
et al. [9] studied a herding behavior using three shepherds
and a single sheep in a simple environment. None of the
aforementioned methods have shown the ability to guide
flocks in environments with obstacles.
Swarm control can also be viewed as a cooperative prob-
lem. The survey from Parker [10] provides an overview of
multi-robot systems. From the perspective of multi robot sys-
tems, the task of crowd control requires inherent cooperation,
in which the success of a robot in the team depends on the
actions of other robots. Inherent tasks (such as crowd control)
are distinguished from non-inherent tasks (such as covering)
in that they cannot easily be decomposed into independent
sub-tasks and thus are generally more difficult. Multiple
robots may also move in formation [11] to accomplish a
given task. In our previous research on shepherding behaviors
[12], we observe that formations can be used effectively to
control the motion of the group. Similar observations have
also been found in sociological studies of crowd control [13].
Recently, Shell and Matarić [14] have used multiple robots
to deploy and assist with the evacuation of pedestrians.
Effective solutions to the shepherding problem might also
be applicable in other areas. The deformable shapes used in
this paper have dynamic properties similar to oil spills [15],
and this approach may be useful for developing effective
containment and cleanup strategies.
Other Recent Work (note: integrate these into the other
sections) Yeh et al. developed composite agents [1] which
can exhibit many different behaviors including guidance, for
which they use proxy agents as temporary obstacles.
III. P RELIMINARIES
A. Group Control Problem
In this section, we define some of the terms and concepts
that are used later in the paper.
In a group control problem, there are two types of agents:
shepherds C and a flock G. A shepherd is an external agent
that influences the movement of the flock. A flock is a
collection of agents that try to steer away from the shepherd.
The shepherd’s task is to steer the flock to desired locations.
All agents have the shape of 2-d discs (of varying radii).
The state of an agent A (a shepherd or a flock member) is
represented by the position and velocity of A, i.e., (xA , vA ).
Let the composite states of C at the time step t be SC (t) and
let those of G be SG (t). Therefore, a group control problem
with n flock members and m shepherds in a 2-d workspace
will have a state space in 4(n + m) dimensions.
Each flock member g ∈ G will be repelled by each visible
shepherd c ∈ C. We assume that the shepherd c knows about
g’s reactions. The flock G also exhibits certain behaviors
when no shepherds are visible. In this paper, we will use
the flocking behavior [16]; however, other models such as
pedestrian dynamics [17] can also be used. In fact, the
proposed methods will be independent of G’s behaviors. In
addition to the collision-free constraint, other (user-defined)
constraints may be added, such as constraints that prevent
the flock from separating for too long or prevent merging
different types of flocks. A state that does not violate any
constraints is called a feasible state.
We use the term target to denote any intermediate position
that the shepherd attempts to steer the flock towards, and we
use the term steering point to denote any position to which
the shepherd moves himself in order to influence the move-
ment of the flock. A roadmap is an abstract representation
of the feasible configuration space in a given environment,
given as a directed graph G = (V, E), where each node in
V represents a valid configuration, and each directed edge
(p, q) ∈ E denotes that it is possible for the flock to travel
from configuration p to configuration q.
B. Problem Statement
Finally, we define the group-control problem as follows:
Given SC (0) and PG (0), find a sequence of feasible states
SC (t) for 0 < t ≤ 1 so that all PG (t) are feasible and
PG (1) ∈ GS, where GS is a set of user specified goal states.
IV. OVERVIEW OF O UR M ETHOD
In this section, we will talk about the main framework
of the proposed method. This framework can be realized in
many different ways. An implementation of this framework
is discussed in Section V.
A. Group Control as Deformable Shape Manipulation
In order to control the flock’s motion, the shepherd’s
internal models should comprise the following components:
(1) the shepherd’s behavior model, (2) the environment
model, (3) the flock model, and (4) a model to represent
the other shepherds. Later, we will use these models as our
basis to define shepherd’s motion. Details of each model are
described below.
Behavior model The shepherd’s behavior is similar to
that of a single- or multiple-arm robot performing object
manipulation. To manipulate an object, a robot arm must
alternate between two basic behaviors: “Transit” (reaching
and grasping the object) and “Transfer” (transporting the
grasped object) [18], [19]. The shepherd has two analogous
behaviors: “Approach” (transit) and “Steer” (transfer). In
approaching behavior, the shepherds attempt to get close
to the flock without disturbing it. In steering behavior, the
shepherd attempts to move the flock.
 obstacle
(a)
Fig. 2. (a) An environment with a global roadmap, two obstacles, a shepherd (larger disc) and two sub-flocks. Each flock member is shown as a small
disc enclosed in a dashed circle, which represents its visibility. (b) The shepherd’s flock model is shown as two α-shapes for the two sub-flocks. (c) A
local roadmap is built around the flock nearest the shepherd.
Environment model All shepherds have access to a global
roadmap representing the workspace. An example of such a
roadmap is shown in Fig. 2(a).
Flock model It is impractical to handle each flock member
individually, even when controlling a small flock. We believe
that the shepherd should have a high level representation
of the flock to more efficiently guide the flock. In most
existing methods, a bounding circle of the flock is used to
model the flock. This model works fine when the workspace
is relatively sparse. However, in environments with many
obstacles or narrow corridors or when the flock size is large,
a bounding circle is excessively restrictive.
In the proposed framework, the shepherd represents the
flock as a deformable object which can also split and
merge. During steering, the shepherd acts as a “deformer”,
continuously reshaping the contour of the flock to some
target shape. For example, the shepherds can represent the
contour of the flock using α-shape [20], [21], shown in
Fig. 2(b), which is updated as the flock moves. To prevent the
shepherd from disturbing the flock unnecessarily, the value
of α can be determined from the flock’s sensing range. In this
paper, the shepherds represent the flock using “pixel blobs”
(see Section V for details) to represent the flock’s deforming
contour.
Shepherd model A shepherd needs to have a model to
represent other shepherds. This model affects how we solve
the the task allocation problem that assigns steering positions
to shepherds. In this framework, we use a centralized system
that knows the locations of all the shepherds.
This is analogous to a large robot arm with many fingers
(i.e. shepherds) manipulating a deformable object (i.e. flock).
All these fingers are connected to and only communicate with
a central command center, which coordinates the shepherds.
Therefore, we reduce the task assignment problem to a
bipartite matching problem between the steering points and
the shepherds. Then, the edge weight of the bipartite graph is
the geodesic distance (estimated using the global roadmap)
between a shepherd and a steering point.
B. Shepherding
By representing the flock as a deformable object, the shep-
herding problem becomes a deformable object manipulation
(b) (c)
problem. Given a desired shape, the shepherds’ task is to
find and position themselves at the contact points near the
deformable object. A solution to the problem is likewise
reduced to determining a sequence of target shapes that will
eventually lead the flock to the final goal. D EFORM, shown
in Algorithm 1, outlines the steps necessary to achieve the
goal.
Algorithm 1 D EFORM (G, C, g)
Input: G (flock), C (shepherds), and g (goal)
while g is not reached do
Compute the contour polygon PG (t) of G at time t
Determine the next target polygon PT (t + δt)
Find ssteer ∈ SC to morph PG to PT
Move C to ssteer
More precisely, D EFORM regards the flock as a deformable
object with an area conservative constraint. That is, D E -
FORM will find a sequence of continuously deforming poly-
gons PG (t), t ∈ [0, . . . , 1], so that PG (1) is near a goal. For
each PG (t), the shepherds can tightly pack all flock members
in PG (t). Because D EFORM may not consider shepherd
positions when building PG (t), additional soft constraints on
PG (t) should be imposed to increase the chance of finding a
successful control plan. For example, the shepherds should
keep each polygon PG (t) as “fat” as possible and keep the
medial or the principal axis of PG (t) close to the edges of the
global roadmap. The fatness increases the controllability of
the flock and the centeredness reserves room for maneuver.
There are many ways to compute the target polygons PT (t).
For example, we can grow a search tree along the edges
of the global (workspace) roadmap. Alternatively, we can
simply extract a path with maximal clearance and build a
sequence of area-conserving polygons along the path. Details
are discussed in the next section.
Next, D EFORM computes the movements for the shep-
herds so that the flock can assume the shape of polygon
PG (t) at each time step t. More specifically, given the
desired shape PT (t + 4t) in the next time step and the
current flock model PG (t), the behavior will determine the
necessary deformation and transformation to morph PG (t)
to PT (t + 4t) using, for example, the Iterative Closest Point
(ICP) algorithm [22] when α-shape is used to compute the
contour. In this paper, we use boolean operators between
pixel blobs to determine the necessary deformation. Finally,
D EFORM calculates a steering state ssteer ∈ SC for the
shepherds (recall that SC is the state space of the shepherds).
a potential steering point
PG − PT
PT
(a) (b)
Fig. 3. (a) Target shape, current flock blob, and a potential steering point.
(b) Finding steering points using a radial partitioning.
V. I MPLEMENTATION D ETAIL
In this section, we flesh out the framework discussed in
the previous sections. In particular, we discuss in detail how
a flock is represented as a deformable shape, how the target
shape is determined, and how the steering points are chosen.
An important feature of our framework is that it can be
implemented in many different ways. While using α-shapes
can provide high accuracy in flock contour representation, in
order to efficiently create the flock model, a new algorithm to
efficiently update the α-shapes [23], [24], [25] is required.
This method will need to exploit the temporal and spatial
coherence of the flock’s movement.
To avoid this difficulty, we discritize the workspace into a
regular grid and represent the contour of the flock using pixel
blobs (described below). Each cell in the grid is classified as
a free cell if a flock member in the cell is free of collision
from the workspace obstacle. Otherwise, the cell is marked
as an in-collision cell. The size of the cell in the grid is
defined by the geometric size of an individual flock member.
Therefore, each cell can only be occupied by a single flock
member. This approximation is very easy to implement and
is very efficient (linear to the flock size). As we will see
later in our experiments, this representation is also accurate
enough to model and handle large flocks.
A. Flock Blobs
The pixel blob of a single member g of a flock is simply
the set of pixels that are within the distance r − of g, where
r is the sensor range of g and  is an arbitrarily small number.
The pixel blob of a flock (called flock blob) is therefore the
union of all pixel blobs of its members. The flock blob may
have several connected components if the flock has separated
into sub-flocks.
B. Target Blobs
Given the current flock blob, the target shape is defined
as another pixel blob, called a target blob, that includes all
flock members at the next time step. It is straightforward
to compute the target blob. First, we pick a pixel that is
occupied by the closest flock member to the final goal
position. The closeness to the goal is measured by geodesic
distance. Once the center pixel o is determined, we grow the
blob using free pixels, starting with the 8-connected set and
expanding in concentric rings around o. We stop when the
blob contains the same number of pixels as the number of
flock members. This ensures that the blob is large enough to
contain all flock members and also conserve the area of the
target blobs throughout the entire control behavior.
We say a flock configuration conforms to a target blob if
the target blob includes all flock members.
Note that the target blob could be grown in many different
ways. For example, one could make it grow away from
obstacles or toward the medial axis. The version we used
in this paper makes the blob grow as fat as possible.
C. Shepherds’ Steering Points
Given a flock blob PG and a target blob PT , we compute
the set of steering points ssteer . To compute ssteer , we first
compute the differences between PG and PT . This is simply
done by performing the boolean difference PG − PT pixel
by pixel.
Next, we determine a set of potential steering points,
s0steer . We say a pixel p is in s0steer if (1) p is neighboring
(using 8-connectivity) to a pixel c ∈ PG − PT , (2) p 6∈
(PG ∪ PT ), and (3) p is on the opposite side of the pixel in
PT closest to c. An example of p is shown in Fig. 3(a).
Once the points in s0steer are identified, the last step is
to choose n points from s0steer , where n is the number of
shepherds. If the there are fewer than n points in s0steer ,
we are finished. In this case, some shepherds may not have
steering points assigned and will stay stationary.
If there are more points in s0steer than there are shepherds,
then we partition s0steer into n pie wedges whose apex is at
the center of PT (the flock member closest to the global
goal). In each pie wedge, the point in s0steer farthest from
the global goal is selected as a steering point (see an example
in Fig. 3(b)).
After ssteer is computed, the steering points are assigned
to the shepherds by forming a bipartite graph whose nodes
are the points in ssteer and the shepherd positions, and
whose edge weights are geodesic distances between them.
The steering point assignment is then solved using a bipartite
matching algorithm.
Screen shots our simulation running D EFORM can be
found in Fig. 4.
VI. B EHAVIOR - BASED M OTION P LANNERS
D EFORM can also be used as a local planner in higher-
level planners such as PRM, RRT and EST. Based on our
results here and in [2], planning is not generally helpful.
 potential steering points PG − PT PT
flock
shepherds
Fig. 4. Screen shots of the proposed shepherding behavior in action.
However, theoretically speaking, the proposed control be-
havior may not always successfully control the flock. For
example, in some rare cases, the deformable polygon may
block paths needed by shepherds to reach their steering
points. For the sake of completeness, we will discuss two
high-level planners: RRT and META - GRAPH integrated with
the D EFORM.
A. Distance Metrics
In both planners, distance metrics are important for esti-
mating the the probability of successfully herding from one
flock state to another flock state. Using Euclidean distance is
usually not enough to reflect this probability. In addition, we
use the idea of deformation energy which defines the amount
of effort needed to deform one polygon (representing the
start state) to another polygon (representing the goal state).
Again, deformation energy can be implemented in many
ways depending on the representation of the deformable
object. By representing the polygon as a pixel blob, we
have the advantage of efficiently computing the overlay of
two deformable polygons. More specifically, given two pixel
blobs, P and Q, we translate P so that their centers coincide,
then count the number of pixels in the boolean difference
P −Q. This value approximates the number of pushes needed
to deform P to Q. The final distance between P and Q
is simply a weighted sum of the Euclidean distance be-
tween their centers and the deformation energy estimated by
boolean difference P −Q. In our implementation, we use the
same weights for both Euclidean distance and deformation
energy.
B. RRT
Our RRT-based planner constructs the roadmap G by
repeatedly attempting to extend G using the proposed control
behavior towards new randomly generated configurations in
W . For RRT, the procedure S ELECT-I NTERMEDIATE G OAL
chooses a random configuration g in the workspace, and
the procedure S ELECT-N ODE -T O -E XPAND chooses the node
already in G that is closest to g.
C. Meta Graph
Meta graph is a PRM-based method proposed in our recent
work [2]. Although originally designed for directed circles,
(a) “empty” (b) “s” (c) “spiral”
(d) “broken-t” (e) “pillars” (f) “env-6”
Fig. 5. Environments used in our experiments.
it can be easily adapted to the proposed method. Each node
in a meta graph represents a meta configuration. A meta
configuration defines a set of group configurations (excluding
the shepherd positions) that are conforming to the properties
of the node. More specifically, each meta configuration C is
as a pixel blob that has twice as many pixels as the number of
flock members. Each meta configuration intuitively defines
a set of conforming flocks. We say a flock is conforming to
a meta configuration C if x% flock members overlap with
the pixels of C. In our implementation, we let x = 85. A
meta configuration is generated in the same way as the target
blob is generated (in Section V). We first pick a random
point p in workspace and use p two grow a blob level by
level. These meta configurations are then connected to their
k-nearest neighbors form a meta graph. In a similar fashion
to lazy PRM approaches [19], paths from the meta graph are
extracted and evaluated using the proposed control behavior
until a path is found, or until no path can be found to connect
the start and the goal configurations in the meta graph.
VII. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
We evaluated our new D EFORM behavior against the
simpler M AGB behavior across 6 different test environments,
shown in Figure 5. The next sections explain our experimen-
tal method. For this paper, each experimental sample consists
of 30 runs, and claims of statistical significance are based
on 95% confidence.
A. Scalability
We presume that increasing the size of the flock should
impact both the effectiveness and performance of the shep-
herding algorithm, and that more shepherds will be needed
to move larger flocks to the goals in a timely manner. The
scalability of these behaviors is defined by the ability for
them to effectively herd increasingly large flocks to the goal
within the given simulation time budget.
To test our hypotheses, we ran experiments with varying
number of shepherds (1, 2, 3, and 4) and varying flock sizes
 randomness. In these figures, randomness is shown as a
1.2 DEFORM
MAGB ratio from 0.0 to 1.0 where 0.0 represents fully determin-
stic behavior and 1.0 represents fully random behavior. In
1
general, D EFORM performs significantly better than M AGB
0.8 with increasing flock randomness. An interesting effect is
Success Rate

shown in Figure 7, where there is a bump in performance

0.6
with increasing flock randomness for the M AGB behavior.
0.4 We believe that this is because the random oscillation of
the flock members helps the shepherds push them through
0.2 narrow corridors in the broken-t environment in similiar way
0 to salt through the openings of a salt-shaker.

-0.2 1.2 DEFORM

1/05 2/10 4/20 6/30 8/40 MAGB
Shepherd/Flock Ratio 1

Fig. 6. Success rate vs. Shepherd/Flock Ratio on s Environment. 0.8

Success Rate
0.6
(5, 10, 15, 20, and 25) on each of the 6 test environments. 0.4
We computed success rates as the proportions of sample
runs where the algorithm successfully moved the flock to 0.2
the goal. Table I shows example results for the “broken- 0
t” environment. For small flock sizes, D EFORM and M AGB
perform similarly. However, as the size of the flock increases, -0.2
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
M AGB shows significant decay in performance - it is clear Flock Randomness
that more shepherds are needed to control larger flocks using
the M AGB behavior. On the other hand, D EFORM manages Fig. 7. Success Rate vs. Randomness Ratio on the broken-t Environment.
to achieve excellent results throughout (above 90% sucess
rate) with no negative trend in performance up to 25 flock
members.1 1.2 DEFORM
MAGB
We also ran experiments to test larger shepherd and flock
1
sizes on the “s” environment. The results, shown in Fig. 6,
show that D EFORM once again outperforms M AGB across 0.8
Success Rate

the board, but especially with larger flock sizes.

0.6
TABLE I
0.4
S UCCESS R ATES FOR D EFORM AND M AGB WITH VARYING S HEPHERD
AND F LOCK S IZES (B ROKEN -T) 0.2

D EFORM M AGB 0
# Shepherds # Shepherds
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 -0.2
5 0.93 1.00 0.90 0.83 0.90 1.00 0.93 0.97 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
Flock Size

10 1.00 0.93 0.93 0.93 0.56 0.97 1.00 0.97 Flock Randomness
15 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.93 0.47 0.80 0.77 0.83
20 1.00 0.97 1.00 0.90 0.07 0.67 0.43 0.83 Fig. 8. Success Rate vs. Randomness Ratio on the s Environment.
25 1.00 1.00 0.97 0.97 0.00 0.40 0.33 0.43

C. Does High-Level Planning Benefit from D EFORM?

B. Robustness
Our previous work compared the effectiveness of a simple
We define robustness as the ability for the shepherds to
behavior-based shepherding algorithm to algorithms that
control the flock in spite of unpredictable flock behavior.
combined low-level behaviors with high-level planning. We
We modeled the unpredictable behavior by linearly mixing
found that in many cases, the planning methods we applied
each flock agent’s behavior with a random vector. We control
did not yield significant enough improvements to justify the
this randomness by increasing and decreasing the magnitude
additional computational expense. Indeed, our tests showed
of the random vector. Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the results
that with a fixed budget of simulation steps, planning-based
(with 95% confidence bars) of success rate versus increasing
approaches using these techniques were often unable to
1 We intend to extend these experiments to higher flock sizes for the final even match the performance of our behavior-only method.
release of this paper. In almost all environments, planners using the D EFORM
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