Ants vs. humans: Solving the piano-mover puzzle

The piano moving puzzle involves trying to move an oddly shaped load through a confined space with various obstacles. This is one of several variations of classical computing motion planning problems, a key element in many robotics applications. But what happens when you pit people against ants in a piano-moving puzzle competition?

According to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, humans have superior cognitive abilities and should therefore outperform ants. However, depriving people of verbal or nonverbal communication can level the playing field: In some trials, the ants perform better. And while ants improved their cognitive abilities by acting collectively in a group, the same cannot be said for humans.

Co-author Ofer Fainerman of the Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues saw an opportunity to use the piano-moving puzzle to shed light on group decision-making, as well as the question of whether it is better to cooperate in a group or maintain individuality. . “This allows us to compare problem-solving skills and performance across groups of different sizes and down to one individual, and allows us to compare collective problem solving of different types,” the authors write.

They decided to compare the actions of ants and humans, since both species are social and can cooperate when transporting loads larger than their size. Essentially, “humans excel at individual cognitive abilities, while ants excel at cooperation,” the authors write.

Feinerman et al. used crazy ants(Paratrechinsky barbelss) for their experiments together with human volunteers. They developed a physical version of the piano moving puzzle, involving a large T-shaped weight that had to be moved across a rectangular area divided into three chambers connected by narrow slits. The load started in the first chamber on the left, and the ant and the man had to figure out how to transfer it through the second chamber to the third.