This Is the First Walking Robot That Navigates Without GPS

Desert ants are such exemplary navigators that research has stipulated; they use the Earth's magnetic fields for orientation. One thing is for sure, ants always find their way home. Now, researchers took inspiration from these tiny insects to design a robot that can move independently and then find its way back to its base without any GPS or mapping. They have appropriately named it the AntBot. "It is equipped with an optical compass used to determine its heading by means of polarized light, and by an optical movement sensor directed to the sun to measure the distance covered. Armed with this information, AntBot has been shown to be able, like the desert ants, to explore its environment and to return on its own to its base, with the precision of up to 1 cm after having covered a total distance of 14 meters," says the organization's press release.