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Robot ant spied on and learned the behavior of other ants. A surprising project by Bristol engineers!
Researchers at the University of Bristol wanted to find out how ants communicate information among themselves. To do so, they designed a small robot that learned to mimic insects. Here’s what new we learned about ants.
Ants are insects that are regarded as extremely intelligent creatures. However, the secret of ants’ wisdom lies in the entire anthill and colony, which forms a cooperative intelligent community. These little architects and workers — if left without companions — would not know what to do. That’s why each ant relays information to the next ant about what it has just seen or where it has encountered, if only a new nest.
Can a robot teach an ant the way to a new nest?
A team of researchers from the UK set out to find out exactly how this information transfer takes place. To do this, the researchers built and programmed a tiny robot to show the way to ants of the species Temnothorax albipennis . The authors of the study emphasize that this is specifically a behavior called “tandem running”. They described their discovery in the pages of the scientific journal Journal of Experimental Biology.
