Ants!!

This is another TED talk, as I mentioned in another post, there'll be a lot of them.

This talk is all about ants. Individual ants are pretty dumb, but when you put a bunch of them together amazingly complex order arrises. Debrah Gordon has spent the past 20 years of her life studying ants and has figured out how it happens. The emergent behavior of these small individually acting entities results in a complex living commuinty. Each component is essantially the same, capbale of every task the colony requires, how the colony organizes itself is akin to a mesh network where components communicate locally resulting in actions that spread throughout the entire colony. The workings of ant colonies could help inform artificial intellangnce and I am tempted to model a colony.

I would also have to model an environment. It would have to be some kind of sand box where users could go in and mess with the ants, such as place food and obstacles.

This seems like it would be a neat thing to do and a fun challenge, now where to find the time...