Emergent cooperation in ant-like robots*

Carpenter ants are known to exhibit cooperative tunnel digging and bridge building. They rely on touch and chemical signaling (pheromones) for communication, but it is not known how these environmental cues are processed to drive cooperation. To understand the minimal number of sufficient behavioral rules for cooperation, we developed a robotic platform consisting of ant-like robots that can both physically interact and communicate through a virtual pheromone field. A mechanism enables the robot ants to manipulate the environment to either create a bridge or construct a tunnel. We present simple behavioral rules that lead to emerging cooperation in our robotic platform and will show how these insights can inform us on the internal processes that drive collective construction in biological systems.