Particle Swarm Optimisation

Particle swarm optimisation began as a failed bird simulation.

Kennedy and Eberhart were stripping rules out of a flocking model in 1995 to see which ones mattered. Collision avoidance went, velocity matching went, and the choreography fell away. The dots left behind were finding the optimum of whatever function defined "good".

Part 4 of Algorithms, Live, with the swarm running in the page and sliders to break it.

https://www.kenreid.co.uk/blog/particle-swarm-live.html