A matchbox-sized robot that can infiltrate a pack of cockroaches and influence their collective behaviour has been developed by European scientists.
The tiny robot smells and acts just like a roach, fooling the real insects into accepting it as one of their own. Through its behaviour, the robot can persuade a group of cockroaches to venture out into the light despite their normal preference for the dark, for example.
The researchers behind the robot believe it could be used to catch cockroaches and that bots designed to mimic other animals could one day work on farms controlling flocks of sheep and chickens by similar means.
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Cockroaches and other insects such as ants display 鈥渃ollective intelligence鈥�. This means that complex group behaviour emerges from simple individual action and interaction. Researchers from France, Belgium and Switzerland set out to create a robot capable of controlling a group of cockroaches by exploiting this emergent behaviour.
Cockroach pheromones
The researchers came up with 鈥業nsbot鈥�, a wheeled robot about the size of a small matchbox. It contains several computer processors hooked up to a camera and an array of infrared proximity sensors that allow the bot to identify obstacles and real cockroaches. To the human eye it might not look much like an insect, but cockroach pheromones and carefully programmed behaviour are enough to convince real roaches that it is one of the gang.
鈥淚f you don鈥檛 put the pheromone molecules on them, the cockroaches get scared because they are afraid it is a predator,鈥� says roboticist Jean-Louis Deneubourg from the Free University in Brussels.
To get the robots to behave like real insects the team developed a mathematical model of cockroach behaviour by observing real ones. Tweaking this model suggested ways that the robot infiltrator might steer the behaviour of the whole group by exploiting the creatures鈥� tendency to follow one another.
A created by the researchers shows several Insbots travelling around a maze and interacting with cockroaches.
Deneubourg鈥檚 team tested the persuasive power of Insbots by putting 4 robots and 12 cockroaches in an enclosure with dark and lit-up areas. They programmed the robot to seek out real insects but also veer towards the lit area.
Scared of the dark
鈥淚t鈥檚 important they prefer the light shelter, but not too much,鈥� Deneubourg says. 鈥淚f they have too strong an attraction for the light they will go straight there and not interact with the real cockroaches.鈥�
The researchers are keen to develop other robots that can socialise with animals and influence their behaviour in a similar way. They have already begun studying the group behaviour of sheep and chicken. 鈥淐hickens are a good example of a mixture of collective intelligence and leadership,鈥� Deneubourg says.
鈥淭his work has useful applications for influencing animals,鈥� says Eduardo Izquierdo-Torres, who researches evolutionary artificial intelligence at Sussex University in the UK. 鈥淏ut what is perhaps more important is understanding how intelligence can arise from simple components.鈥�
A better understanding of the rules that produce collective intelligence in cockroaches and ants could lead to innovative forms of artificial intelligence, says Izquierdo-Torres. 鈥淚t would be interesting to build our own intelligent societies of animals,鈥� he says.
