hello, I would like to do a visual simulation of ants. Is someone knows where I could find interesting articles and experiences about the ants. More particurlarly I am interested in two aspects of the ants behaviour: FORAGING and COOPERATIVE TRANSPORT Basically I would like to be able to answer at this kind of questions: An ant follows the pheromon trail from the source food to the nest. what happened if suddenly we cut the pheromon trail? How can the ants know the number needed in order to move a prey? Thank you for any suggetions you can give!!!

Well, cutting an ant''s chemical trail would be quite impossible to say the least. However, if you did, the ants would wander until they picked up another chemical trail that led back to the nest.

Ants communicate via their antannae, so they transmit information back to one another on the way back, and to prey.

An army ant sim would be really, quite neat. Post if you have more questions on ants

-Chris

thank you chris!!

It is what I thought: The ants would be lost. Do you know articles where such experiments have been done. My goal is to create a real simulation. That''s why I would like to know more about the ants behaviour.

bye

I know cooperation in agents is a pretty hot topic at the moment. I''ve seen some papers on it (related to robots not ants, but specifically about determining numbers required for transport) on citeseer (www.citeseer.com) but I can''t remember their names. The papers I''ve read usually start off with a brief explanation of real ant behavior so it may be worth doing a search there.

I have a vague notion that Craig Reynolds has done something with this problem too. But I may be completely wrong.

If you do anything interesting don''t forget to let us know! (I think most of us here have some level of affection for ants)

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Stimulate

Well, you could actually perform the experiment yourself. Just go find a wandering ant, and place him in a jar. After a few days, the ant will end up fying from lack of food/water/energy. If the ant is lost, it will continue to search for a pheremone trail endlessly, until it ends up dying. So, to program that type of AI in your simulation wouldn''t be too difficult I imagine

-Chris

P.S. - Reason I know so much about this, is I have a certain fondness for ants, coupled with the fact that I volunteer at the local zoo''s invertebrate house :D

hi all,

I start this project. For 3 months I am going to study these fascinating insects in order to create virtual ants. So it will be a pleasure to share my work with you. For some of you who would like a good book about social insect you can read
"Swarm Intelligence. From Natural to Artificial Systems"
Eric Bonabeau
Marco Dorigo
Guy Theraulaz
Oxford University Press 1999

see you!!

Sounds great, I''d love to get a copy of the finished program

If you need any help or have any further questions about ants, please post here, and I''ll try to check back and post ASAP

-Chris