Traffic jams? Study reveals ants’ secrets to smooth traffic flow

Ants, with their highly organized social behavior, have long inspired research. In particular, they have often inspired simple solutions to complex problems and, today, they could help us solve one of the most pressing challenges in today’s urban environments, that is transportation in urban contexts.

Two professors from the University of Trento have delved into ant behavior to understand how these insects manage to move in an orderly manner without stop-and-go disruptions, even in great numbers. Their findings were collected in an article that has just been published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives.

“Ants are among the few species that can handle bidirectional traffic flows, much like our roads, yet they move seamlessly without congestion,” explains Marco Guerrieri, a professor specializing in road and railway infrastructure at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Mechanical Engineering and co-author of the study with Nicola Pugno, professor of solids and structural mechanics at the University of Trento and of materials science at the Queen Mary University of London.

By observing a 30-centimeter ant trail—equivalent to 100 times the body length of each ant—and analyzing video footage with deep learning algorithms, the researchers tracked individual ants’ movements, mapping their trajectories, speeds, flows and densities.

“Ants follow pheromone trails marked by a leader ant, and move in platoons with small gaps and no overtaking,” notes Guerrieri.

This strategy could make human mobility more efficient. Guerrieri says, “In the future, traffic systems for autonomous vehicles (CAVs) could be inspired by ant behavior. Just like insects communicate through pheromones, on smart roads, Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) could use advanced communication technologies to communicate with each other and with the road infrastructure management. In this way, they could form coordinated platoons, moving at high speeds with close spacing across parallel lanes. This approach could enhance traffic efficiency, improve levels of service, and reduce gas emissions.”