Overview

noun: formicarium

An ant’s nest, especially one in an artificial container for purposes of study.

Formicarium is a simplified ant colony simulation focusing on behavioural patterns. At its core the simulation engine governs ant behavior, pheromone-based pathfinding, and environmental interactions, with a visual representation built on top to add a bit of animation and interactivity.

I’ve always been interested in trying to model animal and insect behaviours, and how one might try to replicate these systems with a machine. Ants and the environment they inhabit seemed like a good place to start as there’s a few different patterns and “systems” required to make it appear more realistic. Ant colonies can also be anywhere from a few hundred to a few million ants so testing the systems at that scale is a challenge to implement. This simulation can’t handle millions of ants unfortunately, but it can certainly handle thousands.

You can provide some starting parameters to see how the simulation behaves, give it a go below.