Ants in my Pants
Image depicting ant movements. Credit: University of Granada.
Its impressive how much humans can learn from biomimicry. Soldiers, for example, may soon owe their lives to the same pesky ants living in your own backyard. Researchers from the University of Grenada(UGR), under Antonio Miguel Mora García, Professor Juan Julián Merelo Guervós, and Professor Pedro Ángel Castillo Valdivieso, have taken inspiration from how ants find trajectories from their colonies to their food sources in order to develop a simulator that can devise the “safest” trajectory in a battlefield between any two points, given the necessary parameters.
Dubbed the “ant colony optimization (ACO),” this algorithm has already allowed Antonio to employ it to the videogame, Panzer General, with promising results. Currently, the University of Grenada has received participation from the Ministry of Defense to devise new strategies for them if its success continues.
The scientists of the UGR have developed a mini-simulator in order to define the settings (battlefields), locate the unit and their enemies, execute the algorithms and see the results. In addition, the software designed by them offers a few tools useful to analyze both the initial map and the results.
To prepare this system, Mora García started from the battlefields present in the videogame Panzer General, defining later the necessary properties and restrictions to make them faithful to reality.
While the ACO has immediate benefits to saving the lives of our soldiers, I’m also excited for its applications outside of the military. By extrapolating its uses, we could potentially use the ACO to optimize shipping orders, create shortest routes, plan airplane seating, etc, all by harnessing the creativity and intelligence of Mother Nature. So the next time you see an army of ants devouring your picnic basket, take some time to marvel at the beautiful tapestry of Nature before squashing all of them with your feet.
