Augmented Reality Sandpit Simulating Ant Colonies

The way ants navigate their environment and forage for food is an intricate process. A common way ant species navigate is by using pheromone chemical trails leading to and from food sources. This paper summarizes an augmented reality sandpit project that aims to show the creation and evolution of these pheromone trails within a colony in an interactive way. A complex yet accessible simulation was built to allow users to move sand in a real sandpit while seeing virtually projected images on top of the sandpit change accordingly to showcase emergent ant colony behavior. A demo video of the project is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Kx_xVEZkk.