Fig. 2: Order-disorder transition during collective transport.
From: Maximal response to a mechanical leader at critical group size in ant collectives
The motion of a hinged cargo as a function of increasing group size in the absence of force application by the robot. The top panels depict angular velocity distributions, while the bottom panels display examples of trajectories. For small group sizes (N = 2–4 ants), the cargo moves erratically with very low angular velocity and minimal angular change. This behavior results in an unimodal angular velocity distribution centered at zero. In the transition regime, the intermediate-sized cargo with N = 15–20 ants oscillates with relatively small amplitudes and also exhibits occasional slowing down and direction changes at θ = 0°. In the ordered regime, corresponding to large and very large group sizes (N = 30–40 and N = 50–60 ants, respectively), the cargo exhibits persistent oscillations with larger amplitudes, and the angular velocity distributions in this regime are distinctly bimodal. Source data are provided in the Source data file.
