How ants help a robot to navigate without GPS

Researches have got an insight into the navigation method the Sahara desert ants use: the search for the right path is complicated.\n

There are many examples demonstrating application of the nature’s various principles in robotics. We have earlier written about a robot bird, a flying robot fly, and the use of the insects’ nervous system to create artificial intelligence. This time, knowledge of the desert ants came in handy in robotics.

It is well known that these small but very smart creatures navigate by focusing on the surrounding objects’ illumination; they calculate the distance to them and also assess the strides taken.

The device called AntBot was created by researchers from the University of Aix-Marseille (France). The machine has successfully passed several tests to find various objects. It is noteworthy that it walked in one direction on a winding and tangled path, but returned in a straight-ahead one – the insects behave the same way.

The electronic ant’s creators believe that the system may be useful in the car making sector as a backstop in case of GPS failure.