Revolutionary tracking system unveils fascinating lives of desert ants

A recent international research collaboration involving the University of Sheffield has developed a novel tracking technology that has revealed new insights into how desert ants navigate their environments. This groundbreaking technology could inspire the development of the next generation of smart and efficient robots.

The team has created a tool that uses computer vision technology to track individual desert ants throughout their foraging lives, from when they first leave their nest until they return with food. The new dataset has shown that the ants memorise their homeward paths after just one successful trip. However, their outward routes evolve over time, indicating different strategies for exploration versus exploitation.

The high-precision data also revealed an underlying oscillatory movement that is invisible to the human eye, which explains how ants generate complex search patterns suited to current conditions. As the new software works across animal types and uses video captured using standard cameras, it is already being adopted by numerous international research groups and is ideally suited to citizen science projects.

The technology uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to track the position of an insect in video captured using off-the-shelf cameras. The system can even detect tiny objects that are difficult to see by eye and is robust to background clutter, obstructions, and shadows, allowing it to function in the animal's natural habitat where other systems fail.

This new approach bridges the gap between field and laboratory studies, providing unique insights into the navigational behaviour of ants. Such data will be crucial in revealing how animals with a brain smaller than a pinhead navigate their complex environments so effectively.

The insights gained from this technology are already being turned into commercial products by pioneering University of Sheffield spin-out company Opteran, who reverse engineer insect brains to produce highly robust autonomy using low-cost sensors and computing.

Desert ants are the ideal inspiration for the next generation of robots. They navigate over long distances through harsh environments and don't rely on pheromone trails like other ants, or GPS and 5G like current robots.

This groundbreaking technology could bring new scientific knowledge and inform engineers about how they could build similarly capable artificial systems. The development of such robots could revolutionise the fields of search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and agriculture.