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An Innovative Signal Processing Method to Extract Ants’ Walking Signals

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Abstract

Eusocial insects such as bees, ants and termites communicate multi-modally using chemical, visual, tactile and vibrational cues. While much work has been done on chemical and visual communications, the tactile and vibrational communication channel is somewhat neglected. Recent research indicates that structural vibrations caused by ants can be used to identify their activity level. However, these structural vibrations are caused by the response of the substrate excited by ants walking. The objective of this study is to determine the footprint of ants walking by separating the response of the substrate from the walking signal. The vibration of the substrate (in this case, a wooden veneer) caused by ants walking is measured by a laser vibrometer in an experimental setup isolated from environmental vibrations. By filtering the recorded vibration signal using a technique based on the dynamics in phase space followed by deconvolution from the response of the veneer using Tikhonov regularisation, the ant’s walking signal is extracted and its nature determined.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported under Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project number DP110102564). We acknowledge the special research permit for research-conditions granted by the Forestry Corporation of NSW (FCNSW). The first author received an ECR travel grant provided by the AAS NSW Division to attend the Internoise 2014 conference in Melbourne and the Gerald Riley best paper award of the Internoise 2014.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Acoustics & Vibration Unit, School of Engineering and IT, University of New South Wales, ADFA, Canberra, ACT, 2600, Australia

    Sebastian Oberst & Joseph C. S. Lai

  2. Departamento de Ingeniería de Comunicaciones, ETSI Telecomunicación, Campus de Teatinos s/n, Universidad de Málaga, 29071, Málaga, Spain

    Enrique Nava-Baro

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117543, Singapore

    Theodore A. Evans

Authors
  1. Sebastian Oberst
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  2. Enrique Nava-Baro
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  3. Joseph C. S. Lai
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  4. Theodore A. Evans
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sebastian Oberst.

Additional information

This paper received the Gerald Riley Award for the best paper presented at Inter.noise 2014, Melbourne November 16–19, where at least one of the authors is a member of the Australian Acoustical Society.

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Oberst, S., Nava-Baro, E., Lai, J.C.S. et al. An Innovative Signal Processing Method to Extract Ants’ Walking Signals. Acoust Aust 43, 87–96 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40857-015-0003-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40857-015-0003-x

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