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Ant Colony

Ants is another set of automata or agents which you can find in the Library. These particular agents mimic the behaviour of ants. Each of the ants is programmed to do the following:

  • Wander around aimlessly
  • If food is found, take it back to the colony and leave a trail of scent
  • If a trail is found, follow it

Cooperative and intelligent behaviour emerges all by itself. You can read more on emergence on Wikipedia or on the NodeBox research site.

Click the image to watch the ants in action (please be patient while the movie loads).

 


Play movie

 


We also used a variation of this algorithm as a brain for a set of cute robots released in the MuHKA (Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp, Belgium) during the Time Canvas festival, you can see some pictures of the output there.

 

Created by Tom De Smedt