Thread: Ant Colony Simulator

Here's the link, check it out if you feel like it: Ant Colony Simulation

As a final project in my AI class, I developed a program that hopefully introduces non-programmers to the artificial intelligence principle of emergence in ant colony optimization.

Basically, the program models how real-life ants cooperate to find food. Even though each individual ant is pretty dumb, the colony as a whole shows intelligent behavior. Through pheromones and some very simple rules, ants work together to respond to dynamic environments (which you can change on the fly).

spiral.jpg

The program's source is available, and it might serve as a base for another programmer to implement something more game-like. This could be the beginnings of a tower defense game, or just a better version of the open environment I've started here.

I'm submitting this later today, so any feedback on stuff that isn't obvious is appreciated. Also, if anybody using a mac could do a quick "this works", I'd appreciate it. My professor uses a mac, but I don't have one to test on.

I've also posted this here and here.

This is brilliant Kevin I really like it! I will enjoy taking a look at the source code shortly

The ant colony optimization wiki is a very interesting read.

Originally Posted by JavaPF

This is brilliant Kevin I really like it! I will enjoy taking a look at the source code shortly

Haha thanks, although I'm not sure the source code is going to be all that enjoyable. This program definitely suffered from feature creep, so the code is not as organized as it could be. But it works! Hopefully my professor likes it too, since this is 30% of my grade...

Pretty cool. I tested it on my mac earlier this morning and it definitely runs smoother on a PC (at least the applet). Not sure there's much you can do about it though - I just noticed a minor flicker here and there. I've definitely found it so beneficial to write gui's such as this to demonstrate, understand, and debug algorithms.

Originally Posted by copeg

Pretty cool. I tested it on my mac earlier this morning and it definitely runs smoother on a PC (at least the applet). Not sure there's much you can do about it though - I just noticed a minor flicker here and there. I've definitely found it so beneficial to write gui's such as this to demonstrate, understand, and debug algorithms.

Thanks. I'm not surprised if you see some slowdown or flickering, I am definitely not doing things optimally. I'm just glad it works!