Saturday Science and Math Academy (118)/Interim Report

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=118

Problem Definition
The problem is to make a system of ants with dynamic environments, and evolving decentralized system. The ants behavior and food collection will also change with the evolving environments. The ants behavior with a decentralized system will be applied to bomb defusing, networking, and to target antibodies in the human immune system.

Problem Solution
To solve our problem we will make a simulation in Netlogo, to prove that our system is possible. The simulation will show that a decentralized system is more effective and efficient in many ways, such as bomb defusing techniques.

Progress to Date
As a team we have made a lot of progress in 3 months. Our team has taken many steps toward the challenge. One of the steps we have taken is we have programed two ant behaviors, including site fidelity and density recruitment. Our team has learned to use the programming language Netlogo. Additionally our team has learned many different applications of both ant behaviors such as bomb defusing robots, and nanotechnology applications.

Expected Results
At the end of the challenge our team plans to have learned many applications to ant behaviors and make changing environments to our program. The changing conditions will show when a decentralized or centralized system is more effective. As a team we plan to grow and learn even more life experiences from the programming language Netlogo.

Cited Sources

 * http://theses.ulb.ac.be/ETD-db/collection/available/ULBetd-09172004-201049/
 * http://www.stanford.edu/~dmgordon/research.html
 * http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ahae/papers/fallacies.pdf
 * http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.4.pdf

Interim Comments
Hello,

I love biologically inspired design. This is a fascinating topic that I'm sure will yield interesting and hopefully useful results. I have a few questions for you that I didn't see addressed in your report.

Changing Behavior
When you say that the ants behavior will change with the evolving environment do you mean the emergent behavior of the ant colony or the programmed behavior of the individual ants? If you mean the individual ants: Do these changes need to be coordinated across the colony? What sorts of triggers will change their behavior?

Comparison
What sorts of centralized systems are you going to test your algorithms against? Do you plan on writing these yourself? Do you have specific computational tasks with measurable results? For example, maybe a bomb defusing game.

Time Question
Do you have enough time to apply your algorithm to all of these different topics? It might be advantageous to focus on one specific task than trying to tackle all of these topics at once.

Reminder
Remember that you have face to face evaluations coming up. Your next milestone is a |face to face evaluation in February.

The judges will use these rubrics to evaluate your projects. Use them as checklists for what you need to communicate to the judges.


 * Expo Judges Rubric
 * Finalist Judges Rubric

Great job on your literature review. I haven't read through all of your sources but I've glanced at a couple and they look very interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing your ants in action.

John Donahue