Biomimicry robot

The insect-vision stalker robot.

Do we want robots who can "track" the way insects stalk their prey? Too late--we're getting them!

In a paper published in the J of the Royal Society Interface, researchers at the Univ of Adelaide describe how things learned from both humans and insects can be applied to make an artificial intelligence system "pursue" an object.

Detecting and tracking small objects against complex backgrounds is challenging, they say--but bugs can do it.

Especially good at it are dragonflies, who can chase prey or mates even in a swarm of bees.

They can catch prey flying up to 60 mph--and do it 97% of the time. Their brain is only the size of a grain of rice, though. Nevertheless, the researchers could track how it worked.

Roughly explained, the scientists developed an algorithm that locks onto the background and lets the target move against it.

So far, they have put this concept into a robot quite a bit larger than a dragonfly--perfect for going after larger prey? I mean, goals?