ants simulation
Why Hacker News recommends it
Linked in ant-simulation threads as a compact, open-source example of emergent behavior.
What it is
A one-minute visualization of a simulated ant colony in which ants follow pheromone trails, with the source code on GitHub. It shows emergent behavior arising from simple rules.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2014 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Recommends newman8r · 2018-12 · on “Ant Colonies Retain Memories That Outlast the Lifespans of Individuals”
Take a look at this visualization [this video] There's a repo in the description. Might not be specifically relevant to your project though
Cites hughlomas · 2014-10 · on “Simulating the emergent behavior of ant colonies”
I loved reading this because I made something exceedingly similar a few years ago, and I'm similarly fascinated with how complex behavior can emerge from such simple rules. [this video] My ants also had no conception of where their home was located, their behavior is entirely pheromone driven. They can "read" pheromones from any adjacent cell. They leave a pheromone every movement depending on which state they are in, either "find food" or "return food". In my system, the pheromones have a strength. Whenever an ant touches the nest, his "nest pheromone" is at full strength (255). Each movement decreases the strength by 1. This sets up a natural gradient of nest strength for ants to follow. They a
Cites hughrlomas · 2022-07 · on “Show HN: Ants Sandbox - an ants simulator”
This is great to see. Years ago I created a basic simulation using the same principles of pheromone gradients, one for the nest and one for food. [this video] It a fascinating example of emergent behavior from simple rules. I've been wanting to find time to revisit the concept and produce an updated version, your simulation seems to include everything I wanted to do and more.