Click here to launch the application in a new window (javascript popup)

These ants live in your computer, eating your transistors!

OK, I made this simulator for an Artifical Intelligence course. Its purpose was to implement the search and communication strategy for finding food.

Real ant colonies demonstrate an astonishing example of "collective intelligence". Individuals have very limited intelligence and memory; yet they act like a single, more intelligent organism as a colony. They achieve this with the help of "pheromones".

After the simulation started, each ant tries to get away from the others. This helps covering a larger area in less time. And they also paint the ground with the RED pheromone. The concentration and gradient of the RED pheromone indicates the direction of the hive.

When an ant finds the food, it carries it to the hive following the increasing amount of the RED phereomone. At the same time it starts to paint the ground with the BLUE pheromon. The BLUE pheromone helps others to find the food.

In the simulator, you can set the number of ants in the colony and the places of the hive and the food. It is very exciting to observe that, time passed before finding the food is directly proportional to the number of ants. Ifyou pick a number under 20 for example, they can even stuck at some place. Collective intelligence can be turned off with the topmost button. Also there are other buttons which change several visual indicators.

Can we apply the concept of "collective intelligence" to our communities? I hope so...