Volvo is determined to build an injury-proof car by 2020, and the engineers working out the bugs developing so complex a vehicle hope to include a few as well. They’re studying the African locust to figure out how to make cars mimic the insect’s uncanny ability to avoid crashing into each other as they swarm.

The goal is to incorporate the African locust’s “sensory-input routing methodologies” in a car, making it smart enough to avoid hitting people. “If we could trace how the locust is able to avoid each other, maybe we could program our cars not to hit pedestrians,” says Jonas Ekmark, Volvo’s director of preventative safety.

The way Volvo sees it, there’s no difference between millions of locusts swarming across Africa and millions of people commuting to work each morning. If the bugs can avoid hitting each other, they ask, why can’t we?

“Locusts are quick-reacting and have reliable circuits, they do their computations against lots of background chatter, much like driving around town,” says Dr. Claire Rind, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in London who turned Volvo on to the idea.

Source: wired.com