What Termites Teach Us About Robot Cooperation

At a glance, a single worker of the genus Macrotermes is not a very complex creature--less than half an inch long, eyeless, wingless, with an abdomen so transparent you can spot the dead grass it ate for lunch. Put it in a group, though, and it may pile up pinhead-sized balls of mud, one after the other, until a complex mound takes shape. By the time that mound is 17 feet tall, it will be equivalent in scale to the Burj Khalifa. In its basement sits a symbiotic fungus, which digests grass for the nest and requires continuous care from the workers. Although termites build without the benefit of architects or engineers, their mounds are ingeniously constructed, using cues known only to the bugs.