Title: Swarm Intelligence: Ant Algorithms Lead: Kristin Eicher-Elmore Advisors: Dr. Juliano, Dr. Renner

This project is an experiment in Swarm Intelligence using Ant Algorithms to find the shortest path to a goal. In the natural world, a path to food is discovered by scouts that leave a pheromone trail. The first ant to return to the nest with food has left the strongest scent since it returned first. This scent will decay after time but once another ant picks up the trail, it will reinforce the scent with its own pheromone trail, and the trail becomes established in this way. Boe-bots equipped with Parallax Radio Frequency Transceivers are used as the ants in this project. The Parallax CmuCam is used to track the progress of the Boe-Bots, and serves on a main "brain" board that communicates pheromone information to the "ants". This pheromone value tells the ants which path is the shortest one to the food goal. Currently, Ant Algorithm experiments like this one are being used in Search and Rescue research.