Version française

Go to the site of the Artificial Anthill Project

Home site

You will find more information on the site of the project is http://aanthill.free.fr/

Project Goals

The two main directions are :

  • Simulation :
    The ultimate goal of simulation is to create realistic artificial anthills. They will evolve with possible external interventions from the user (researcher or player). Each anthill could have a different environment and species of ants. Each category of ants (queen, worker, warrior) could also have different behaviour that would be customizable by the user.

  • Encyclopedia :
    This can be seen as an artefact of the project and the natural evolution for the site.

Current state

The first step was the creation of this web site. The second step was to build a reinforced team to be able to have productive interactions that are not possible with only one or two persons. The third millenium will be the good one for the project. :)

Core Team

  Project Leader : Xavier Outhier
  Quality Assurance : Carine Ilponse
  Development : Carine Ilponse, Xavier Outhier
  Web technologies : Gérard Vient, Xavier Outhier
  Biology : Tomek Wlodarczyk
  Artificial Intelligence : Dimitris Vyzovitis, Xavier Outhier, Gérard Vient
  Translation : Adam Gosselet (French <> English)

Contributors

  Initiation of the project: Stéphane Bagnier, Jean-Michel Lekston
  Web technologies : Lukas Marsalek
  Graphics : Lukas Marsalek, Paolo Veronesi

Partners

We currently are in contact with

  • Alexis Drogoul, researcher in Artificial Intelligence and autor of an anthill simulation program: MANTA.
  • Dominique Fresneau, ethologist who uses MANTA.
  • Abraham Hefetz, chemist specialist of insect pheromones.

We are open to cooperate with other partners. We consider to interact with profesionals (myrmecologs, ethologists) or amaters. We would also like to cooperate with teachers and their pupils.
Feel free to contact us if you want to participate to the project or propose some content for the site like pictures pictures or whatever.

Project management

Human side
First of all the goal is to have pleasure. Life is too short we must enjoy it. Second and that's the magy of Internet, this project will be realized by an international team. Members are from sereval countries (Czech Republic, France, Italy, Poland, USA) we will also interact with a person from Brazil. It's up to you to make this list longer. :)

Technical side
One main idea is that the project should be done incrementally and that each step of the project leads to something finalized. The other idea is to keep a consistent documentation in order to make easier for newcomers to get into the project. This project will also help us to gain some experience in project management. We will practise modern methodologies including object oriented design (OOD) or Unified Modeling Language (UML) and The Unified Software Development Process.

History

  • March 2001: Schedule of the quizz-applet developement.
  • January 2001: Definition and specification of the quizz-applet that would be part of the encyclopedia part of the project.
  • December 2000: Internal documentation, collect of biological data, logo, reflexion on a more precise definition, ...
  • October 2000: Building of a new team
  • September 2000: First release of the site
  • February 2000: Project initiation by members of D2SET