Self-steering Vehicle Designed to Mimic Movements of Ants

A team of engineers from the University of La Laguna (ULL) in Tenerife has designed the “Verdino”, a self-steering vehicle that can sense the road surface using a technique called Ant
Colony Optimisation (ACO). This method is based on the behaviour used by ants to find the shortest way between their anthill and sources of food.
The prototype looks like vehicles used on golf courses and is programmed to travel along unstructured roads, in other words those without lines painted on the surface, or with irregular edges caused by encroachment by soil or vegetation. The engineers are currently testing the small car to be used as an internal transport system to link 25 housing units and a visitor centre in a bioclimatic housing development being built by the Technological and Renewable Energy Institute in the south of Tenerife, and they describe the first results as “very promising”.
The researchers believe the self-guided system could be commercialised and used in vehicles to be used in places such as historical town centres, tourist complexes, exhibition or sporting venues, shopping centres and industrial estates, and could even be used within remote security systems or in adapted cars for elderly or disabled people.

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