Emergent Behavior: Vermins

Spring 2008 || 8 weeks || Team Project || Design & Simulation || Eindhoven University of Technology

Codename “Vermins” is a project to simulate Emergent Behavior using a virtual world in Java, creating complex behavior risen from multiple and relatively simple rules.

The concept was inspired by the struggle between humans and rats in their respective living environment. In this virtual world, the water sources are contaminated by a virus that harms both humans and rats. Both species have their own area within the virtual world that’s separated by a wall. This wall only allows the rats to go through and enter the human’s area.

The fundamental Emergent Behavior rule in this world is that humans and rats have to drink water from a well in order to survive, but they run a risk of getting contaminated and infected. The direction of the agents’ movement is randomized and changes direction upon collision. Furthermore, to visualize the effect and status of the agents, the water level is depicted by the blue line and the contamination level by the usage of color. The agents will die if a certain level of contamination has been reached.

As for the interaction:
• Agents of the same species can reproduce when colliding with each other
• Agents can contaminate each other and infect the other specie
• Human agents can kill rat agents
• Human agents are able to cure by visiting the hospital once a certain level of contamination has been reached

To create Emergent Behavior the rules were determined by interaction parameters and its probabilities. Parameters used for these experiments were: Speed, Infection Rate, Water Consumption, Reproduction Rate, Killing Rate and the positioning of certain objects.

Simulations