ROBOT ROACHES

November 2007

Those Final Years who have done the Animal Behaviour course may remember me showing videos of robots behaving like ants. The same Belgian group led by Deneubourg has now turned its attention to cockroaches, as shown by their article in this week’s issue of Science. If you cover a robot with cockroach pheromone, the real roaches follow it. I’m not sure what this is really telling us, apart from indicating the power of the pheromones, or the effect of introducing another object into the cockroaches’ shelter, but the results are impressive.

BBC article (with video); Science news article, Science research article, with supplementary videos (subscription needed).

THE ROBOT SALAMANDER THAT CAN SWIM AND WALK

March 2007

Swiss scientists built a robot that, like a salamander, can both swim and walk, in an attempt to model how animals may have made the transition from aquatic to terrestrial locomotion.

Science article here (subscription necessary), BBC summary here. Watch the salamander walk, compare it with the robot.