Silkmoths 'aid development of sensitive chemical sensors'

In total, 14 male members of the Bombyx mori family were used in experiments that saw moths placed individually into a two-wheeled robot to follow the sex pheromone usually given off by a female.

According to a statement, the robot was then used to characterise silkmoth tracking behaviours and it is hoped that these can be applied to other autonomous robots so they can track down smells, and the subsequent sources, of environmental spills and leaks when fitted with highly sensitive sensors.

The results were published today in IOP Publishing’s Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

The male silkmoth was chosen to drive the robot due to its characteristic ‘mating dance’ when reacting to the sex pheromone of the female. Once the male is stimulated by the pheromone it exhibits a distinctive walking pattern: straight-line and zigzagged walking consisting of several turns followed by a loop of more than 360°.

Lead author of the research, Dr Noriyasu Ando, said: ‘The simple and robust odour-tracking behaviour of the silkmoth allows us to analyse its neural mechanisms from the level of a single neuron to the moth’s overall behaviour.