Adrian Courrèges

AntSims

AntSims is a graphical simulator of an anthill. It has been written to illustrate principles such as cellular automatons, software agents and artificial intelligence.

The simulation is composed of a large grid where agents (ants) can move. There is also a certain number of resources present on the grid. These resources are randomly distributed at the beginning of the simulation.

The default behaviour of the ant is to move in a random way, each of the direction having the same probability to be chosen. However the moves can be influenced by the presence of pheromones, or by an attraction field.

Concerning the attitude towards the resources, the ant will tend to grab isolated resources. On the opposite it will be more likely to drop the ressource in an area where many resources of the same kind are already present. Of course as the simulation goes on, resources tend to be more and more aggregated.

The behaviour of a single agent is easy to define with simple rules. This is when many agents are put together that a group behaviour appears, like a global intelligence.

Screenshots

Download

• AntSims executable (requires JRE6, sources included)