Follow that Ant
Note: News stories prior to 2019 may contain outdated links.
Ant watching could become a lot less boring for researchers aiming to unravel their intricate social behavior. An image-processing system unveiled at a conference on software robots in Montreal last week not only keeps tabs on 100 individual ants at a time, but can also figure out what jobs they do in the colony. Tucker Balch, a Computer Scientist is working on movement recognition among groups of robots. With colleagues Zia Khan and Manuela Veloso, Balch has created a video-analysis system that not only tracks the ants' movements, but also classifies each ant according to three behavioral types. Read More