Researcher Turns to Ants for Answer to Robots’ Locomotion

Instead of designing complicated computerized brains for his robots, Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Mark Tilden looked to nature. Insects gave him the answer.

For 40 years, scientists have tried to build a robotic device that can think its way around obstacles when moving over unfamiliar areas.

Tilden’s method is different. It’s based on the simple nervous systems found in ants. Insects, after all, are the result of “4.5 billion years of non-government-funded evolution,” Tilden said June 5 at a scientific conference.

There is no computerized brain providing a centralized control for Tilden’s ant-like robots, only transistors connected to motors that drive the creature’s legs. The legs feel their way along, and simple circuits adjust the motor’s tension as the robot moves.

“It mimics what Mother Nature has done, and Mother Nature solved this problem. An ant has virtually no brain on board, and yet it walks,” said Paul Klarer, a robotics researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

Tilden said traditional methods of solving locomotion problems in robotics have failed because scientists try to program robots with all the rules they’ll need to negotiate an unfamiliar world.

The insect-like robots won’t replace more traditional computer-based robotics, but Tilden predicted his new developments could supplement older technologies.