Smell Trail Netlogo - netlogo

I have mouse and cats moving across the view, and I'd like to be able to make a smell trail to the mouses. The smell should fade away with time, simulating the intensity of the smell. If a cat enter on the smell trail, the cat must follow the smell trail to kill the mouse.
I will leave a part of my code, in case it helps:
...
mice-own [energy refX refY]
...
to setup
ca
setup-patches
setup-agents
reset-ticks
end
to setup-patches
ask patches[
let x 28
let y 48
if pycor mod 2 = 0
[set x 48 set y 28]
ifelse pxcor mod 2 = 0
[set pcolor x]
[set pcolor y]
]
end
to setup-agents
create-mice N-mice
[
set shape "mouse side"
set color 4
setxy random-pxcor random-pycor
set energy 50
set refX 25
set refY 25
....
to move-mice
ask mice
[
let x one-of neighbors
move-to x
set energy energy - 1
if energy <= 0 [die]
ifelse show-energy?
[set label energy set label-color black]
[set label ""]
]
end
Thanks for the help.

There is a primitive diffuse that does exactly that. Look it up in the truly amazing netlogo dictionary. There are several models in the model library that use it most famously the ant foraging model.
Pair that with the primitive downhill and your model will almost write itself.

you might want to consider adding some decay to the smell. if not, there's mouse smell everywhere!
additionally some minimal awareness threshold will possibly also get your cats to pursue other leisures than teasing mice.

Related

NetLogo - In-Cone radius

ask turtles
[ ask patches in-cone 3 60
[ set pcolor red ] ]
The code above means to have a cone of radius 3 and angle of 60 degrees. But I want a radius in range of 5 to 10. Is there a way to accomplish this?
What you can do is set up a variable that will hold the radius's that you have asked for. Let's call this variable vision. So,
let vision
set vision 5 + (random 5)
and then you can substitute vision instead of the 3 in your code.
ask turtles in-cone vision 60 [
set pcolor red
]
Here are a couple of ways you could do it. These are adapted into the Vision Cone Example model that comes in the models library with NetLogo, so we're using slightly different distances (between 9 and 30) to make the effect visually obvious. I'd recommend method1, but I'm including method2 as it's useful if you have some alternate logic to apply to the patches that are too close.
to method1
; use `distance` to filter those that are too close
; `myself` refers to the turtle doing the asking
ask patches in-cone 30 60 with [distance myself >= 9] [
set pcolor grey
]
end
to method2
; create a local variable to store the turtles that
; will be too close. `self` refers to the patch
; being asked
let too-close patches in-cone 9 60
ask patches in-cone 30 60 with [not member? self too-close] [
set pcolor gray
]
; I could use the `too-close` agentset here and ask them
; to do something, also.
end

Netlogo: apparent erratic behavior of turtle

I have a model where humans and a door are created. Humans face the door and run to it and exit. The problem is that some humans stop for some reason. Even if only one human is used, it some times reaches the door, and some times it doesn't. What do I have to do so humans always reach the door? This is the model, and this is the code:
globals [ID-door]
breed [door doors]
breed [human humans]
to setup
clear-all
set-default-shape door "star"
crt number [
setxy random-xcor random-ycor
set color cyan
set breed human]
new-door
reset-ticks
end
to new-door
ask one-of patches [sprout-door 1]
ask door [
set color yellow
set size 2
set ID-door who]
end
to go
if count human = 0 [stop]
ask human [
move-human
check-door]
tick
end
to move-human
face doors ID-door
ifelse any? human-on patch-ahead 1
[rt random 40 lt random 40]
[fd 1]
end
to check-door
if any? door-on patch-here [die]
end
Your problem is patch-ahead 1. This looks a distance of 1 in whatever direction the turtle is facing. Imagine the turtle is at the top left corner and looking toward the bottom right corner. The distance to the corner is >1 and the turtle is triggering the 'stay here' check and will be stuck until it is sufficiently turned around so that there is a different patch in front of it.
So you need to get the turtle to exclude itself from the check, which is a job for other. Change ifelse any? human-on patch-ahead 1 to ifelse any? other human-on patch-ahead 1.
I changed the move-human procedure to the following, and now the model works:
to move-human
ifelse patch-ahead 1 = nobody or any? other humans-on patch-ahead 1
[rt random 40 lt random 40]
[fd 1
face door ID-door]
end
As stated by JenB, patch-ahead 1 was the problem, so:
a) Because the world has horizontal and vertical limits (it´s not a wrapped space) the line patch-ahead 1 = nobody checks the absence of patches when such limits are reached.
b) The line other humans-on patch-ahead 1 excludes the current turtle as it may be counted because of the possibility that the distance of 1 may still be inside the current patch, like this image:

Trouble specifying agent's location and sprout command

The objective of my submodel is to simulate how wolf agents avoid patches that have human densities above the wolves' tolerance threshold. When running my model, the sprout command is not generating the number of human agents in the urban patch like I would expect it to. The code for creating humans in the urban patch is:
ask patches [ if self = urban-patches [sprout-humans initial-number-humans]]
Here is the image of my Interface Tab:NetLogo space
The grey is coded as my urban-patches, brown is grass-patches, and green is forest-patches. Why are my human agents not appearing in the grey (urban) patches with the number of agents reflecting the initial-number-humans?
Here is the code for creating the human agents:code
I have specified the xy coordinates of the human agent to be located within the urban (grey) patch, but only one human agent appears when I run the model. How do I correctly code the initial-number-humans to connect with the sprout command?
As I think you have now discovered, the easiest way to distribute a set number of turtles randomly across a group of patches is to use create-turtles rather than sprout. This is because sprout creates the specified number of turtles on each patch that is sprouting them so you need to juggle the total to be created and the number of patches. But that option is useful if you want to achieve even distribution rather than random locations. Here is code that does both.
globals [urban-patches n-humans]
to setup
clear-all
set urban-patches n-of 20 patches
ask urban-patches [set pcolor gray]
set n-humans 100
make-humans-sprout
make-humans-create
end
to make-humans-sprout
ask urban-patches
[ sprout n-humans / count urban-patches
[ set color red
set xcor xcor - 0.5 + random-float 1
set ycor ycor - 0.5 + random-float 1
]
]
end
to make-humans-create
create-turtles n-humans
[ set color blue
move-to one-of urban-patches
set xcor xcor - 0.5 + random-float 1
set ycor ycor - 0.5 + random-float 1
]
end
Note that the adjustments to xcor and ycor are because sprout and move-to always place the turtle in the centre of the patch and there is no primitive for placing in a random place on a particular patch.

In-Cone only works for patch centers Netlogo

I'm having some issues with the in-cone command in Netlogo. I am trying to identify the sum / mean of all the patch variables directly in front of my turtles current location (ie the sum of all the variables it crosses). However, this only appears to be working when my turtle is at the center of a patch (co-ordinates are integers not decimals), which also means I can only move my turtles at right angles. I'm yet to find any other questions pertaining to the same issue on Stackoverflow or elsewhere. So if anyone could offer some insight, I'd be greatly appreciative.
Below is the simple sample code. And I've annotated where making the changes causes this to not work.
Cheers
Paul
turtles-own [value]
patches-own [value-test]
to Set-Up
ca
reset-ticks
ask patches [if pycor > 150 [set value-test 1]]
ask patches [if pxcor > 150 [set value-test 1]]
ask patches [if value-test = 1 [set pcolor red]]
create-turtles 1
ask turtles[
;It works when the turtle is created at the origin (0 0), or at defined coordinates (but not random-xcor random-ycor)
;setxy random-xcor random-ycor
set value 0
set size 10
set color yellow]
end
to go
ask turtles[
;heading has to be 0, 90, 180, or 270.
set heading 270]
ask turtles[
let test mean [value-test] of patches in-cone 10 1
print test
print xcor
print ycor
ask patches in-cone 10 1 [set pcolor blue]
forward 10]
end
in-cone is not the right tool for the job. Unfortunately, NetLogo doesn't have a primitive that looks ahead in a straight line. It does, however, have patch-ahead, which reports a single patch at a given distance. We can use that to build something similar to what your looking for:
to-report patches-ahead [ dist step ]
report patch-set map patch-ahead n-values (dist / step) [ step + ? * step ]
end
This code may look puzzling at first, but what it does it actually quite simple:
It uses n-values to build a list of incrementing values: n-values (dist / step) [ step + ? * step ]. For example, if dist was 1 and step was 0.2, you'd get [0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1]. These values represent the distances at which we are going to be looking for a patch.
It uses map to call patch-ahead for each of values in the list and build a list of patches. Note that this list can contain duplicate patches, especially if step is small, since patch-ahead 0.1 and patch-ahead 0.2, for example, may very well be the same patch.
It uses patch-set to turn that list in a proper agentset of patches, without duplicates.
(You could achieve the same thing with a while loop and an incrementing counter, but the code would be longer, more error prone, and much less elegant.)
To use it, just replace instances of patches in-cone 10 1 in your code by something like patches-ahead 10 0.1.
You will notice that there is a trade-off between precision and speed: the smaller step is, the less likely it is to "skip" the corner of a patch, but the longer it will take to run. But I'm sure that you can find a value that works well for you.
Nicolas has a much better answer solving the problem of looking in a straight line but if you simply what look at the patch directly ahead use patch-ahead 1 it works at all angles and coordinates and is much faster than in-cone.
Completely an aside but probably the reason you found this bug is because your cone was set to 1 degree wide and 10 patches long. Long narrow cones tend to break up.

How to ensure turtles follow heading to leader's heading and avoid the obstacles at the same time

I'm trying to set turtles heading equal to leader's heading and at the same all turtles including leaders must avoid obstacle( avoid_obstacles function). My problem is, when i add the set heading code
in flock function:
[set heading [heading] of one-of nearby-leaders ]
it cause my avoid-obstacle code to break. if i comment out this code, avoid obstacle work fine. below is my complete code.
to go
set time-to-evacuate time-to-evacuate + 1
ask turtles [check fd 0.1]
ask turtles [avoid_obstacles fd 0.1]
ask turtles with [pcolor = red][die] ;;turtles exit thru red door will die
if all? turtles [ pcolor = red ] ;; stop simulation
[ stop ]
tick
end
to check
if not leader?
[let beings-seen patches in-cone vision vision-angle with [pcolor = red]
ifelse any? beings-seen
[let target one-of beings-seen face target fd 1 ]
[flock]]
if leader?
[let beings-seen patches in-cone leader-vision leader-vision-angle with [pcolor = red]
ifelse any? beings-seen
[let target one-of beings-seen face target fd 1 ]
[flock]]
end
to flock
let nearby-leaders turtles with [leader? ]
if any? nearby-leaders in-radius vision
[ set heading [heading] of one-of nearby-leaders ]
end
to avoid_obstacles ;; all obstacles set as green patches
let i 1
while [[pcolor] of patch-ahead i != green and i <= vision]
[set i (i + 1) ]
if ([pcolor] of patch-ahead i = green)
[
ifelse [pcolor] of patch-at-heading-and-distance (heading - 20) i + 1 = green
[
ifelse [pcolor] of patch-at-heading-and-distance (heading + 20) i + 1 = green
[
ifelse random 1 = 0
[ rt 30 ]
[ lt 30 ]
]
[ rt 60 ]
]
[lt 60]
]
end
can somebody point what wrong with my code
First of all, consider abandoning the concept of having "leaders" as such. In crowd escape panic situations, they don't stop and hold elections. LOL. I don't know what your model is trying to model, so I have no suggestions here. My model "
Anyway, what your "followers" need to do is integrate to desires, the desire to go the same way as the leader, and the desire to avoid obstacles.
For the first, the follower simply needs a place to remember the "desired" direction. So, rather than set heading directly, you store the heading of the leader./ Then you perhaps use that heading to influence the movement around obstacles.j
For the second, well, obstacle avoidance is a complex discussion on its own. Whatever you have put together, you need to modify it so that it takes the "desired" heading into account, while still effectively avoiding obstacles. This is can be very difficult to do simply.
My model "homing particles 2009" uses one method. This model is designed to explore a particular homing/avoidance behavior. When a particle can't move in the desired direction, it is allowed to move in a limited number of other directions, instead.
Here is the link: http://www.turtlezero.com/models/view.php?model=homing-particles_2009
Unless you have added http://www.turtlezero.com to your list of allowed sites in your Configure Java console (not recommended, but you can trust me, right?), you will not be able to run my models in the browser. I haven't checked what that model needs to run in NetLogo 5.
The ultimate solution to that problem may be to use a path-finding algorithm, like a* (a-star).
In that case you provide your follower with a preferred destination (and that can be vaguely defined as "a point somewhere in 'that' direction"), and the route-planner algorithm plots a route. You can make the route-planner unaware of obstacles until they are "visible" or whatever you define (for example, in a press of bodies, a follower might not be aware of an obstacle until stumbled upon).
Hope this helps!