Dynamic Behavioral Analysis of Stimulus Response of Running Ants by High-Speed Robotic Platform

We have developed a novel system for applying local area stimulation to freely running/walking single ant on a 2D space. It allows us to inspect more natural characteristics and stimulus response of the ants, because they are not fixed and modified. The system is constructed by integrating the tracking part to take magnified view continuously using a high-speed vision sensor and the stimulation part to apply droplet stimulus using a highspeed inkjet mechanism. In order to clarify the effectiveness of the stimulation, examples of analysis of the dynamic stimulus response of single ant using the captured images are shown and discussed in this paper.