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Swarm Robotics Breakthrough Brings Pheromone Communication To AI (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Computer scientists at the University of Lincoln have invented a reliable, low-cost system which replicates in robots the pheromone-based communication behind insect swarms. Using off-the-shelf equipment including an LCD screen and a USB camera, the team has proposed what they call COS-phi, or Communication System via Pheromone. The artificial pheromone trails are traced visually onto the screen. As soon as a bot picks up on the path, it is forced to follow the leader.
This has a lot to do with pheremone trails, like ants use. But since we can't replicate the chemical nature of pheremnes yet, they are sing photons. If you watched the video you could see that the trail fades with time as would pheremones and it can be followed the wrong way. They also showed following the stronger trail if it crossed itself. These are all behaviors that we had no way of duplicating until someone realized that a light trail could provide a useful analog that could be modulated (color, patterns, etc) to provide different "pheremonal" instructions. So yes, this research is far more than find and follow the white line, and it has quite a lot to do with pheremones.