Abstract Whilst the effects of inbreeding on growth and survival have been well studied, knowledge impact social behaviour is scarce. Animal groups are often composed relatives, which can facilitate cooperation (due to kin selection) improve group performance accordingly. Therefore, increased genetic relatedness in inbred could increase performance, whilst reduced diversity negative (inbreeding...

In ants, we know most about the foraging patterns at the colony level. We know surprisingly little about the foraging behaviour of individual foragers and how they shape the behaviour of the colony. To identify spatial and temporal variation in foraging behaviour at the individual level, we studied at two nests the solitary foragers of the Australian jack jumper ant Myrmecia croslandi TAYLOR, 1...

In this study EMA has been used to observe speech articulator movements during successive productions of a variety of novel polysyllabic nonsense words conforming to English phonotactics. Analysis of sensor trajectories comparing initial and final repetitions shows in general reduction of overall duration and distance travelled, lower variability, and fewer acceleration peaks. Comparison of con...

Highly evolved eusocial insects such as ants return from a food source to their nest by the shortest possible distance. This form of navigation, called path-integration, involves keeping track of the distance travelled and the angles steered on the outbound journey, which then aids in the computation of the shortest return distance. In featureless terrain, ants rely on the path integrator to tr...

Estimation of distance travelled (odometry) forms a vital part of navigation for solitarily foraging ants. In this study we investigated the properties of odometric memory in the Australian desert ant Melophorus bagoti. Ants were trained to travel in linear channels to a feeder placed at 6 m or 12 m from the nest. We determined if the ability to estimate distances accurately increased with expe...

Initially I was concerned with offline two-dimensional bin packing with one-dimensional vehicle routing. The problem is defined by a set of items, each having a height, a width and a destination distance within (0,1]. The destinations are aligned on the same road, along with the depot (starting point) on one side. The goal is to pack items into vehicles of 1 × 1 loading space, drive the vehicle...

This article presents an approach to improve and monitor the behavior of a skid-steering rover on rough terrains. An adaptive locomotion control generates speeds references to avoid slipping situations. An enhanced odometry provides a better estimation of the distance travelled. A probabilistic classification procedure provides an evaluation of the locomotion efficiency on-line, with a detectio...