Robo-roaches reign cockroach society
Imagine that you would like to induce a new wanted behaviour or modify the organisation of a group of animals. Why would you do that? In order to aid pest control by luring insects into traps, to control collective panic movements in poultry farming when animals are gathered in large groups, or maybe to control the roosting behaviour to affect the spatial distribution of wild animals.
Researchers from the project LEURRE recently succeeded in controlling cockroaches with tiny mobile robots. The aim of this project was to better understand collective behaviour of animals and to then use this knowledge to control them with robots. This research has advanced significantly the science and technology of robots, and simultaneously our understanding of insect behaviour. Even if their numbers are limited compared to the group, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern of behaviour. These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organised behavioural patterns in group-living animals.
Links:
This project was funded by the European Commission's Future and Emerging Technologies research scheme
