Project Overview

A number of leading robotics researchers (including for instance, Brooks, Beer and Arkin), tell us their work was inspired in part by the behavior of insects. Recently, ants have captured the imagination of computer science and network systems researchers as an inspiration for their optimizing algorithms (Bonabeau).

In the BORG Lab we are particularly interested in learning about social insects, as they provide an existence proof of successful large-scale robust behavior forged from the interaction of many, simple agents.

Ant behavior can offer a wealth of ideas on how to organize a cooperating colony of agents. As an example, even though they are only capable of very short range communication, ants are able to carry out complex scouting and retrieval operations over tens of meters. The techniques social insects utilize for staging such complex operations could also be employed in the design of robust multi-robot systems --- it is important for us to learn what insects have to offer.

Biologists are also beginning to draw on computer science. In a recent Nature article, for instance, Deborah Gordon suggested that the growth of theory in social insect research has been inspired by the artificial intelligence community. Accordingly, we believe the research in our lab can contribute substantially to the study of insect behavior; in particular, we have developed:


• Vision-based tracking software that can provide accurate, real-time information about the movements of animals being observed.
  
  
• Modeling tools able to infer the behavior of the agents being tracked.
  
  
• Theoretical metrics of social diversity and agent difference that can be used in the analysis of social insect behavior.

We will extend these existing tools for the observation of insects in our laboratory. We will also develop new tools for modeling groups at a societal level rather than just the individuals in a society.