It is not new that scientists say that ants are animals fantastic, but research recently published in “eLife” came to a truly shocking conclusion: using robots, the researchers concluded that ants manage to escape from a prison without any planning. They just “go” together.
Read more: Meet the amazing communication of ants that uses the same data transmission algorithm as the internet
see more
Japanese company imposes time restriction and reaps benefits
Alert: THIS poisonous plant landed a young man in the hospital
The research was done at Harvard. The main idea was to understand the collective dynamics of social insects such as bees, termites and, of course, the stars of this article: ants. “[We want to understand] especially how these insects can manipulate the environment and create complex functional architectures,” said L. Mahadevan, professor of applied mathematics and senior author of the study.
How do ants do it?
They use the antennae to interact with the environment and also with others of the same species.
Throughout the studies, the researchers realized that they spontaneously found themselves in areas where they interacted frequently. In addition, they also saw that when some of them came together around a purpose, the others quickly arrived to help.
Observing the behavior of ants, scholars came to the conclusion that they basically use two variables to do their work: cooperation strength and digging rate. With numerical simulations based on mathematical models, they also came to the conclusion that ants are only successful when they work together.
And the robots?
Calm down, they enter the survey now! After concluding the observations regarding the insects, the researchers built small robots, nicknamed RAnts (robot ants or “robot ants”, in free translation).
The goal was to find out if, working together, they could escape a pen like real animals. In terms of antennae and pheromones, RAnts would follow a trail of light left behind. The little robots were programmed to: follow the trail, avoid other robots where the light density was high, pick up obstacles where there was more light and drop them where there was less.
Following these simple commands, the robot ants were able to quickly escape. It was simply incredible! The technique, according to the researchers, is flexible and resistant to sensitivity and control errors. In addition, it proves to be more resilient than other collaborative approaches to problem solving.
Graduated in Social Communication at the Federal University of Goiás. Passionate about digital media, pop culture, technology, politics and psychoanalysis.
