For me it wasn't about making a commercial product, but rather to see if I could make it happen.

Quote: Original post by Caitlin
For me it wasn't about making a commercial product, but rather to see if I could make it happen.

Fair call.

Can I ask you what were you doing sitting on the bathroom floor ..... naked (I assume) ?

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Reactive systems are a powerful way to simply solve complex problems. I took a class once whre we spent 1/3 the semester on AI through emergent behavior and reactive systems.

One way to do it is with something called a subsumption architecture(see Intelligence without representation). I'm sure there's a wikipedia entry somewhere or something but I'm not going hunting for it right now.

Quote: Original post by datxcod
Can I ask you what were you doing sitting on the bathroom floor ..... naked (I assume) ?

That kind of question belongs to the lounge. :) I was actually sitting in the toilet, designing some stuff on paper and "taking out the trash". To me it's an inspiring moment. :) I mentioned it just to add a little fun to the point of my post which actually is about intelligent_behavior/problem_solving in nature.

To some people this little experiment may look trivial, but to me it says a lot about the capability of that particular ant to solve a problem.

The ant was probably a "explorer" looking for a place to stablish a colony or maybe looking for a source of food. It had assigned a particualar task, any of the two mentioned above. In the middle of this task, it was faced with a particular problem which wasn't directly related with it's main task.

The ant was able to determine the scope of the problem and try different approachs to solve it, discarding the ones that wherent useful "intelligently".

I've also noted that when the ant got out, it stopped like expecting a new wall of champoo to be in the way. Only after it made sure there wasn't anoter obstacle like that in the way, it continue with what it was doing before.

I'm not confident about this, but I suspect that the ant will remember this episode and will be able to pass trough an obstacle like that much more easily next time. And maybe it's descendency will too.

Quote: Original post by datxcod
Can I ask you what were you doing sitting on the bathroom floor ..... naked (I assume) ?

That kind of question belongs to the lounge. :) I was actually sitting in the toilet, designing some stuff on paper and "taking out the trash". To me it's an inspiring moment. :) I mentioned it just to add a little fun to the point of my post which actually is about intelligent_behavior/problem_solving in nature.

To some people this little experiment may look trivial, but to me it says a lot about the capability of that particular ant to solve a problem.

The ant was probably a "explorer" looking for a place to stablish a colony or maybe looking for a source of food. It had assigned a particualar task, any of the two mentioned above. In the middle of this task, it was faced with a particular problem which wasn't directly related with it's main task.

The ant was able to determine the scope of the problem and try different approachs to solve it, discarding the ones that wherent useful "intelligently".

I've also noted that when the ant got out, it stopped like expecting a new wall of champoo to be in the way. Only after it made sure there wasn't anoter obstacle like that in the way, it continue with what it was doing before.

I'm not confident about this, but I suspect that the ant will remember this episode and will be able to pass trough an obstacle like that much more easily next time. And maybe it's descendency will too.

its been said that ants/ bugs arnt actually intellegent alone but in groups they become/ act more "intelegent" kinda like a brain cell.. one brain cell alone "pretty much worthless" but put 5 or 6 brain cells together and WHAM! you have a low class caveman ;P

check out Cellular Automata"

Good post. Ants are very interesting little creatures. I wish I new exactly how he escaped.

BTW, owl, don't know if you are aware of Ant Colony Optimization? You might find it interesting.

One aspect of it is based on the observation that ants always manage to find the shortest path to a food source from their nest. Apparently ants drop pheromones as they walk along, which can then be sensed by other ants. On return from the food source, an ant will follow the path with the most pheromones back. The shortest path very soon becomes apparent as it becomes populated with the most pheromones.

Unfortunately I don't have a link to a site for you, I learned it at varsity a few years, but I'm sure you can dig it up through google.

You should elaborate a bit on yourself, if your first impulse was to kill,
next time before killing a bug or a small animal, or you when you feel the impulse to do some experimenting on something alive, slam an hammer on your hand and see if it hurts

Quote: Original post by Electrovolt
One aspect of it is based on the observation that ants always manage to find the shortest path to a food source from their nest. Apparently ants drop pheromones as they walk along, which can then be sensed by other ants. On return from the food source, an ant will follow the path with the most pheromones back. The shortest path very soon becomes apparent as it becomes populated with the most pheromones.

http://david.gordon.name/projects/Ant-based%20Pathfinding.pdf -- Fairly interesting read, for an honours project :P

Made me think about using the pheremones idea to make an influence map for an RTS AI in a sort of weird pheremone/breadcrumb/flocking hybrid.