Home▸Algorithms & AI▸Ant Colony Optimization: Top-Down Pheromone Field (2D)

🐜 Ant Colony Optimization: Top-Down Pheromone Field (2D)

Ant colony optimisation on a top-down map: ants lay pheromone, trails strengthen on short tours, and the colony solves a travelling-salesman problem checked against the exact optimum.

Algorithms & AI2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted🟠 Blender⇄ 3D version

Details

CategoryAlgorithms & AI

RenderingCanvas 2D

DifficultyModerate

Target FPS60

ControlsSliders for ant count, food source count, pheromone evaporation rate, deposit strength, ant speed and sensor angle; Reset colony button; click the field to add a food source, right-click to remove one; live readouts for food collected, trips completed, average round-trip leg length, active ants and FPS, plus a strip chart of average leg length over time.

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📖 Read the articleThe maths behind Ant Colony Optimization: Top-Down Pheromone Field (2D)

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⚙ Under the hood

A 2D companion to the 3D Ant Colony Pheromone Trails simulation: a real top-down Ant Colony Optimization engine with a pheromone concentration grid that ants deposit along their travelled path and that evaporates exponentially over time. Each ant probabilistically steers toward whichever forward/left/right sensor cell smells strongest, converging colony traffic onto a near-shortest route between the nest and each food source as trips accumulate. Add or remove food sources with a click and watch the average round-trip length fall in the live strip chart.

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2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install