Festo.IO_2023 - Ant-inspired robots

Speaker: Barbara Webb (University of Edinburgh) Ants are highly capable in many behaviours relevant to robotics. Their navigational abilities have been the focus of behavioural and ethological study for many years, and a range of algorithmic models of their behaviour have been proposed, often tested in robot implementations. Our recent work has focussed on bridging the gap to understanding the neural circuits that underly capacitities such as visual orientation, path integration, and the combination of multiple cues. In each case there is an important interplay between exploiting critical sensory cues in the natural environment, and the efficient and robust computation that supports behavioural control. A new direction for this research is to investigate the manipulation capabilites of ants, which allow them to handle a wide diversity of arbitrary, unknown objects with a skill that goes well beyond current robotics. https://io.festo.com/