Ciberlandia ("Cyberland") - Biological inspiration (2015)

[DJuego]

Terrorific Halloween! 😨

Well. Ciberlandia is a free educational project for primary and secondary schools subsidized by public entities from Spain. I will not explain the educational methodology we follow, but each edition is set in a "theme". I will focus on offering a brief synopsis (i hope) of some of the final challenges. I will follow a chronological order.

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In 2015 the theme of our educational project was "Biological inspiration". For this, we used robotic ants!

The ant could move forward, backward, and turn on itself. Clumsily. That's for sure. 😁 😁 😁

NOTE: The original inspiration for the design of the ant's locomotion came from the literature on LEGO constructions.

Very briefly. The challenge was strongly inspired by the stigmergic behavior of ants and other social insects. The ants had to follow pheromone trails that led them to food, and once found, return with that food to the entrance of the anthill.

The world through which the ants moved was real. But the pheromones were only visible in a virtual environment that visually presented the amount of pheromone in a cell. Over time the amount of pheromone in a cell decayed and needed to be reinforced.

The virtual environment application acted as a server that supplied the amount of pheromone in a ground cell info to the ants. On the other hand, the ants reported its position, and the pheromone reinforcement they applied to a ground cell as they passed through it. The application was implemented in C++ with SFML.

NOTE: I am proud of the final effect that was achieved for the "pheromones" in the virtual environment. Particle systems were used to recreate the gaseous nature of the pheromones. The "lines of sight" of the ants were also depicted.

DJuego