University of California, Berkeley
EECS Dept, CS Division
Jordan Smith SLIDE: Scene Language for
Interactive Dynamic Environments
Prof. Carlo H. Séquin

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SLIDE Ant Project

Jane Yen and Brian O'Clair

Spring 1998

This project had an ant model which would walk around over a set of 4 different types of terrain. The figure above shows the ant walking on a mountainous terrain which was created by the function:

z = sin(x) * sin(y)

The other terrains included a hilly surface; a flat, checker board patterned, picnic blanket; and lastly an outdoor scene with a mushroom, two tufts of grass, and a lemonade cooler. The ant's direction and speed can be controlled with the mouse and Tcl/Tk GUI's. In the outdoor scene, the ant detects collisions with obstacles which the user must direct the ant around.

The ant has three different modes of locomotion:

The normal ant motion is on its four legs.
But this ant is anthropomorphic (as shown by its four limbs) so of course it can walk upright on two legs.
And if it is in a hurry, it can switch into rolling mode (defying all of our normal conceptions of anatomy and physiology).
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