1 Artificial Ant

The artificial Ant problem was popularised by Koza (1992), but was originally developed for the field of artificial life by Jefferson et al. (1991). The Ant problem consists of finding the best strategy for picking up food pellets along a trail in a grid. The solution to the problem is an algorithm for collecting food. The Sante Fe trail is often used for the Ant problem. The Sante Fe trail consists of 89 food elements on a two dimensional, $32 \times 32$, toroidal grid, shown in Figure 2.1. The `ant' starts in the North-west corner, facing East.

Figure 2.1: The Sante Fe Trail for the Artificial Ant Problem. Food pellets are denoted with a circle in the above grid.