Talk:Circulation

This concept is commonly referred to as Lateral Velocity in the context of Robocode. If you envision a line crossing through the center of both your robot's and your opponent's positions, then find the perpendicular to that through the opponent's position, you can measure the opponent's rate of change of position along that perpendicular. Alternatively, you can measure the rate of change of angle to the opponent. With either of those measurements, you can scale them to the maximum rate of change, giving you a value in the range [-1.0,1.0]. As a side note, you can do the same with Advancing Velocity (except for heading change), to measure how quickly someone is approaching, or retreating from, your position.

Lateral velocity has proven to be a key measurement for segmentation of targeting data.