One ant is not very smart, but put a bunch of them together and they can achieve some remarkable things. Inspired by this emergent cooperative behavior, Harvard researchers have built robots that can work together to escape from a “prison,” without needing a specific plan.

In a sense, an ant colony runs on algorithms – individual ants don’t specifically think about a task, but they follow a set of instinctual rules that guide them towards complex feats of engineering, like digging tunnel networks or building bridges. They communicate with each other using their antennae and pheromone trails.

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The Harvard team started by conducting an experiment with a small group of ants placed inside a corral, a circular trap surrounded by a soft sandy wall, to see how they worked together to escape. At first, the ants all wandered around randomly, but soon some began digging at the walls in scattered spots. Over time, the team found that the ants gave up their solitary digging and would instead group together to work on one tunnel more efficiently, until they eventually managed to break out.

Read more: New Atlas