Desert ants are extremely impressive navigators - foraging for food over large distances (sometimes >100m), before racing back to their hidden nest entrances to escape the extreme desert heat.  These ants do not lay pheromone cues as they would evaporate very quickly from the desert surface.  Instead they navigate by visual cues, which is surprising given their low-resolution compound eyes. Yet, in the maze-like world of desert scrub individual ants will learn visually guided routes leading to, and from, a plentiful food source e.g. pile of cookie crumbs.

The Ant Navigation Challenge invites you to try and design a method that navigate like an ant when given realistic visual input.