Geoff Sholler
CSC410 Problem Anal ysis
2/11/0 8
The problem I intend to address with my project is that of producing an accurate
visual model representing the movement of mosquitoes with regards to humans. This
model will include biting, as well as the mosquitoes’ attraction to human body heat. The
movement and interactions of both humans and mosquitoes will be dictated by
probability-driven mathematical formulae that are generated by previously gathered
data and given to me by Prof. Lev Kapitanski. Inputs will include mosquito population,
human population, and run speed for the simulation. The output will primarily consist of
the visual model representing the movement and interaction of the humans and
mosquitoes. The appearance of the simulation, while it’s running, will basically be
representative markers, distinguished as either humans or mosquitoes by different
colors, moving around on the screen. There will also be data output to show results of
categories such as average bites per mosquito with the possibility of others to be
added. Although I haven’t finished the decision process regarding the programming
environment I am going to use, I am working on getting simple demos working using
three separate methods. NetLogo, which is an environment that was designed
specifically for simulation models similar to what I am going to make, but I have to
determine if I can do everything with it, computationally, that I want to do. The other two
options are graphics libraries within the JAVA environment, so I know that the
computations should be doable. The first library is JOGL, which I’ve had some
experience with, and the demo should show me how well it can handle the sort of
graphical load I need it to handle. The other option is a library called Processing, which
is in a working BETA level of design and can be found at http://processing.org/. Based
on the demos on their website and others I’ve seen, I am pretty sure that it can handle
the graphics end, and by programming the demo I can gauge how complicated it may
be to learn. The goal of the demos is to find the best environment to use based on
appearance, functionality, and relative simplicity of learning.