Just call these tiny autonomous construction robots “antdroids”
Biomimicry is a significant driver in robot design; like ants, RAnts are too small to possess human-level cognition and memory, so if they’re going to achieve complex goals, they need to out-source, or exbody, their data-processing to their environment. Whereas some actual insects use pheromones as biochemical markers (or stigmergic traces), the RAnts biomimicked version is photormones – light signals – to guide the actions of their collective.
Why it matters: The “RAnts” system demonstrates insect-inspired collective construction and demolition behaviors using very small autonomous robots. The project is important because it explicitly explores emergent collective building behavior for future manufacturing and adaptive construction systems rather than centralized robotic control.
https://newatlas.com/robotics/tiny-autonomous-construction-robots-rants/
