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Project Goals
The two main directions are :
- Simulation :
The ultimate goal of simulation is to create realistic artificial anthills.
They will evolve with possible external interventions from the user (researcher
or player). Each anthill could have a different environment and species of ants.
Each category of ants (queen, worker, warrior) could also have different behaviour
that would be customizable by the user.
- Encyclopedia :
This can be seen as an artefact of the project and the natural evolution
for the site.
Current state
The first step was the creation of this web site. The second step was to
build a reinforced team to be able to have productive interactions that are
not possible with only one or two persons. The third millenium will be the
good one for the project. :)
We are seaking for people
- Webmaster
We are looking for a webmaster. His/her tasks would be to:
- take care of the evolution of the site, see more detailled description hereafter.
- port the link page into a kind of encyclopedia pages
- add features for submenu
- create some process to build automatically the site or some part
of the site (possibly using XML and XSL, support can be done for that).
This could be good for links list, downloda page in particular for
pictures to give more information of the picture (author, date, location,
specy, ...)
- survey and add links related to the project, try when possible to
exchange links
- propose improvement for the site (FAQs, getting feed back for visitors, ...)
- Graphic Designers
We are looking for computer graphic designer, 2D or 3D. Their tasks would be to:
- manage the legacy sources we already have to make icons (3D modeling,
POV-Ray
- create new icons following written requirements
- create logo with and without text for the project
- propose complete graphic design for the software interfaces and applets
- Biologists/Biochemists
We are looking for biologist or biochemist. Their tasks would be to:
- collect data (pheromones, thermal behaviour, life duration, localisation, ...)
from the litturature and researchers about ants but also termites and all
the animals ans plants that have interaction with ants
- propose some feature to be integrated in the simulation
- Translators
We are looking for translators in all languages. The site is currently published
in French and English. Translations have been done for Polish and Spanish. We have
one page translated in Germain (the previous translator has no more time). Some
translator are currently working on the following versions:
Arab, Czech, Hebrew, Italian and Slovak. Any other language is welcome.
The task of the translators would be to:
- translate the site
- translate the graphic user interface of the software and applets
- search links related to the theme of the project in their language
Core Team
| Project Leader :
| Xavier Outhier |
| Quality Assurance :
| Carine Ilponse |
| Development :
| Carine Ilponse, Xavier Outhier |
| Web technologies :
| Gérard Vient, Xavier Outhier |
| Biology :
| Tomek Wlodarczyk |
| Artificial Intelligence :
| Dimitris Vyzovitis, Xavier Outhier, Gérard Vient |
| Translation :
| Adam Gosselet (French <> English)
Tomek Wlodarczyk (English <> Polish)
Rafael Yepes (English <> Spanish)
Yu Jinqiang (English <> Chinese)
Robert Kovalic ( English <> Slovak) |
Contributors
| Initiation of the project:
| Stéphane Bagnier, Jean-Michel Lekston |
| Web technologies :
| Lukas Marsalek |
| Graphics :
| Lukas Marsalek, Paolo Veronesi |
Partners
We currently are in contact with
- Alexis Drogoul, researcher in Artificial Intelligence and
autor of an anthill simulation program: MANTA.
- Dominique Fresneau, ethologist who uses MANTA.
- Abraham Hefetz, chemist specialist of insect pheromones.
We are open to cooperate with other partners. We consider to interact
with profesionals (myrmecologs, ethologists) or amaters. We would also
like to cooperate with teachers and their pupils.
Feel free to contact us if you want to participate
to the project or propose some content for the site like pictures
pictures or whatever.
Project management
Human side
First of all the goal is to have pleasure. Life is too short we must enjoy
it. Second and that's the magy of Internet, this project will be realized
by an international team. Members are from sereval countries (Czech
Republic, France, Italy, Poland, USA) we will also interact with a person
from Brazil. It's up to you to make this list longer. :)
Technical side
One main idea is that the project should be done incrementally and that
each step of the project leads to something finalized.
The other idea is to keep a consistent
documentation in order to make easier for newcomers to get into the project.
This project will also help us to gain some experience in project management.
We will practise modern methodologies including object oriented design (OOD)
or Unified Modeling Language (UML) and The Unified Software Development
Process.
History
- March 2001: Schedule of the quizz-applet developement.
- January 2001: Definition and specification of the quizz-applet
that would be part of the encyclopedia part of the project.
- December 2000: Internal documentation, collect of biological data,
logo, reflexion on a more precise definition, ...
- October 2000: Building of a new team
- September 2000: First release of the site
- February 2000: Project initiation by members of
D2SET
Special thanks
We would like to thank these following persons for their help:
Bozena and
Francine for having read first release of the site and found a lot of tipos.
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