Robots infiltrate insect world to learn their ways

Flick on the light when a family of cockroaches are scuttling across your kitchen floor and they'll swiftly disperse – only to regroup in the walls. To understand how cockroaches – and other animals – work as a group, researchers are sending in robots. These can help reveal group dynamics. Bee bots have been used to study waggle dances in honeybee hives, for example. Others are looking at how robots can infiltrate colonies and influence behaviour.