Without a determined design or leader , ants are able to reconstruct incredible structures based on collective ego - organisation . Even in the absence of a reproducible leader , this allows them to create entire subterranean cities and social structure using their own bodies . Army ants from Central and South America , for good example , are renowned for mold living bridges to shorten distance to food .
The ants can not only span gaps with comfort , but are also capable to dismantle and move their worm bridge within seconds to make foraging more efficient . The effort has beencaught on cameraby an outside group of researcher . By being capable to pick up and move their bridge , it allows the ants to move around at maximal speed through an unidentified environment , the investigator cover in a paper publish in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The squad skip that understanding how this is attain could help in the creation of autonomous golem swarms .
Time - lapse of army ant moving their nosepiece to expurgate their foraging route . Chris Reid / The University of Sydney
It waspreviously assumedthat once construct , the populate bridge were a comparatively static complex body part . The researchers , however , found that this was n’t the case as they moved in reply to changing information and conditions . When the flow of ants crossing it increase , for good example , the insects widened it ; to reduce the route , they would shift its place . “ Indeed , after starting at point of intersection between twigs or liana travelled by the ant , the bridge lento move away from their starting point,”explainsDr . Christopher Reid , co - author of the paper , “ creating shortcut and progressively lengthen by gain of raw actor – before stopping , suspended in mid - air . ”
Perhaps most significantly , they also found that the forming and move of bridges required a cost - benefit trade - off . By moving the bridges to make a shortcut , they often had to lengthen it in the process . As more emmet were used to build the bridges , it meant that fewer were usable for other important undertaking , such as find food for thought . “ In many suit , the pismire could have created better shortcuts , but or else they quit moving their bridges before achieving the unretentive path possible,”saysDr . Reid .
It is think that the work carried out on the tiny insects could have import for other self - building system , like reconfigurable material or robotic cloud . This could then have future applications in disaster zone , in which robots could organize themselves to navigate around a tangled , irregular background . “ Such swarms could accomplish remarkable tasks , such as creating bridge to navigate complex terrain , plugs to repair morphological breaches , or supports to stabilize a fail structure,”explainsDr . Reid .
