Ant Colony Optimization in the City of Chicago

The 150 Media Stream in Chicago gave us the opportunity to do something interesting to be visualized on their huge 89 LED screens.

We wanted to give an insight in how algorithms work, after a few concept iterations and extensive prototyping we decided to visualize the ACO (Ant Colony Optimization) algorithm, this algorithm we use daily in services such as Google Maps. The ants will try to find the shortest route between the parks in Chicago; depending on it’s surroundings (there are obstacles such as water and building) the ant will decide which pixel next to move to. If successfully the ant will leave pheromone which strengthens the underlying routes.

The visualizations drills down from an overview of the City of Chicago to the actual ants internal working to visualize their decision making matrix. In between the visualization toggles between the actual pheromone levels (visualized in numbers) and a visualization of the map on which the ants move. This ultimately results in a map showing the optimal routes between the different parks in the city.