“While this kind of behavior has been seen in groups of living animals ranging from insects to vertebrates, this study shows that autonomous robots can be used to study and control group behavior,” said Jose Halloy and colleagues in the study published in the November 16 issue of Science.

Halloy, of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and his co-authors used robots similar to cockroaches in size but not shape, and which were coated to mimic a natural cockroach exterior cuticle.

They introduced the minority robots which, with the majority cockroaches, together determined the choice of shelter.

The scientists said robots controlled the collective decision-making process and yielded a behavior — the choice of an inappropriate shelter — not observed in groups of cockroaches alone.

“These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals,” Halloy and co-authors added.

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