Pheromone Diffusion

Video recorded for report;

To be of use the pheromone must diffuse in an expanding 3D Gaussian like shape. It must also dissipate in the absence of pheromone being added. The video below show a clean Gaussian shape that grows and then levels off at a constant size.

Pheromone Diffusion. Increments of 10 pheromone updates. Evaporation rate = 0.08 . Diffusion rate = 1.0. Queen phermone added at rate of 100 per Zeit tick.

Interesting project: Virtual Creatures

This is a project those interested in Colony may also be interested in. Has relatively little in common with the aims of Colony but another interesting example of stigmergy in computer science and uses the same engine as Colony, Ogre3D.

About Virtual Creatures;

This application is an example of evolutionary computing that you can run on your own Windows PC at home (see the download section). It uses a process similar to biological evolution to gradually evolve a population of virtual creatures in a 3D graphical and physical environment. Much of the inspiration for this project came from the wonderful work of Karl Sims.

Video Footage... It lives!

If you just want the highlights see the comments at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=535175355828864093&hl=en to jump to the key sections. Also see the link to the gallery at the bottom of this post to get stills if you find the video hard to see.

Another quick update with some eyecandy. The vid shows the current build. The Zeits have very simple intelligence and only one pheromone is used to build a relatively decent mound. Key points to notice;

• Real-time! It can just about handle real time with just the one pheromone. The program also can be set to auto adjust the rate of pheromone diffusion/zeit update to keep things in check. For the sake of this demo zeit update and pheromone update are allowed to get out of sync.


• Billboards to show pheromone (that can be switched on and off). THis runs a lot quicker than full particle affects. Also a lot easier to see whats going on


• Pretty organic looking. I'm pretty proud of how organic the mound looks. I'm hoping thats pretty unique


• Pretty reliable framerate. Uses three threads and always makes sure the interface is smooth, even if the diffusion/zeit calculations are having trouble


• Its a little hard to see but the Zeits have to dig before they can deposit (so they have building material. This results in a small trench around the mound


• They take far to long to build! I need to boost there brains a bit and get them using some more pheromone to get more impressive results

Colony Screenshots