Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may
owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much despised insect whose painful bites
and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people
living in the southern United States.
By studying fire ants in the laboratory using video tracking
equipment and X-ray computed tomography, researchers have uncovered fundamental
principles of locomotion that robot teams could one day use to travel quickly
and easily through underground tunnels. Among the principles is building tunnel
environments that assist in moving around by limiting slips and falls, and by
reducing the need for complex neural processing.