Publications related to Ant | EPFL Graph Search

Targeted worker removal reveals a lack of flexibility in brood transport specialisation with no compensatory gain in efficiency

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Laurent Keller, Fazil Emre Uslu

Division of labour is widely thought to increase the task efficiency of eusocial insects. Workers can switch their task to compensate for sudden changes in demand, providing flexible task allocation. In combination with automated tracking technology, we de ...

Nature Research2024

Social isolation shortens lifespan through oxidative stress in ants

Alessandro Crespi, Laurent Keller

Social isolation negatively affects health, induces detrimental behaviors, and shortens lifespan in social species. Little is known about the mechanisms underpinning these effects because model species are typically short-lived and non-social. Using coloni ...

Nature Research2023

Robotic manipulation to investigate the physical principles of biological self-organization

Fazil Emre Uslu

Self-organization is the spontaneous formation of ordered patterns and networks from a population of comparatively simple elements or individuals with no prior information on neither the formation process nor the final organization. While the construction ...

EPFL2022

Multiple nest entrances alter foraging and information transfer in ants

Bertrand Eric Collignon

The ecological success of ants relies on their ability to discover and collectively exploit available resources. In this process, the nest entrances are key locations at which foragers transfer food and information about the surrounding environment. We ass ...

2020

Decoding urban development dynamics through actor-network methodological approach

Jean-Claude Bolay, Marija Cvetinovic

Due to growing social and physical transformations, contemporary cities reveal the profound necessity of proper scientific approaches that are adjusted to conditions of global complexity and dynamic patterns of development. Predominance of an overall marke ...

2017

Uncovering Latent Behaviors in Ant Colonies

Patrick Thiran, Matthias Grossglauser, Laurent Keller, Mohamed Kafsi, Raphaël Braunschweig

Many biological systems exhibit collective behaviors that strengthen their adaptability to their environment, compared to more solitary species. Describing these behaviors is challenging yet necessary in order to understand these biological systems. We pro ...

SIAM2016

Oral transfer of chemical cues, growth proteins and hormones in social insects

Laure Menin, Oksana Riba Grognuz, Daniel Ortiz Trujillo, Laurent Keller

Social insects frequently engage in oral fluid exchange trophallaxis between adults, and between adults and larvae. Although trophallaxis is widely considered a food-sharing mechanism, we hypothesized that endogenous components of this fluid might underlie ...

Elife Sciences Publications Ltd2016

Ant Metaheuristics with Adapted Personalities for Vehicle Routing Problem

Rémy Glardon, Nicolas Zufferey, Jaime Farres

At each generation of an ant algorithm, each ant builds a solution step by step by adding an element to it. Each choice is based on the greedy force (short term profit or heuristic information) and the trail system (central memory which collects informatio ...

2015

Ant Metaheuristic with Adapted Personalities for the Vehicle Routing Problem

Rémy Glardon, Nicolas Zufferey, Jaime Farres

At each generation of an ant algorithm, each ant builds a solution step by step by adding an element to it. Each choice is based on the greedy force (short term profit or heuristic information) and the trail system (central memory which collects informatio ...

Springer Int Publishing Ag2015

Evolution of division of labor in artificial societies

Pawel Lichocki

Natural and artificial societies often divide the workload between specialized members. For example, an ant worker may preferentially perform one of many tasks such as brood rearing, foraging and nest maintenance. A robot from a rescue team may specialize ...

EPFL2013

Tracking Individuals Shows Spatial Fidelity Is a Key Regulator of Ant Social Organization

Alessandro Crespi

Ants live in organized societies with a marked division of labor among workers, but little is known about how this division of labor is generated. We used a tracking system to continuously monitor individually tagged workers in six colonies of the ant Camp ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2013

Interest modeling in games: the case of dead reckoning

Kévin Clément Huguenin

In games, the goals and interests of players are key factors in their behavior. However, techniques used by networked games to cope with infrequent updates and message loss, such as dead reckoning, estimate a player's movements based mainly on previous obs ...

Springer2013

Communication-based Swarming for Flying Robots

Dario Floreano, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Sabine Hauert, Severin Leven

We aim at implementing a swarm of Micro-Air-Vehicles for creating communication networks (SMAVNETs) in disaster areas. For this purpose, we propose strategies for steering flying robots using only communication hardware (e.g. WiFi module or radio modem) an ...

Ieee Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Po Box 1331, Piscataway, Nj 08855-1331 Usa2010

Ant-based Swarming with Positionless Micro Air Vehicles for Communication Relay

Dario Floreano, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Sabine Hauert, Laurent Winkler

Swarming without positioning information is interesting in application- oriented systems because it alleviates the need for sensors which are dependent on the environment, expensive in terms of energy, cost, size and weight, or unusable at useful ranges fo ...

2008

Group Transport Along a Robot Chain in a Self-Organised Robot Colony

Francesco Mondada, Michael Bonani, Roderich Gross

We study groups of autonomous robots engaged in a foraging task as typically found in some ant colonies. The task is to find a prey object and a nest object, establish a path between the two, and transport the prey to the nest. Once a path is established, ...

IOS Press2006

Division of labour and colony efficiency in social insects: effects of interactions between genetic architecture, colony kin structure and rate of perturbations

Dario Floreano, Stéphane Magnenat, Laurent Keller, Markus Waibel

The efficiency of social insect colonies critically depends on their ability to efficiently allocate workers to the various tasks which need to be performed. While numerous models have investigated the mechanisms allowing an efficient colony response to ex ...

2006