A University of Alberta news release describes the insect inspired robot research of Hong Zhang. He is working on developing cooperative robot collectives that can perform tasks in the same way groups of bees or ants do. The Collective Robotic Intelligence Project (CRIP) project uses Multi Robot Systems (MRS) that are able to make collective decisions without any robot being in charge. "Your friends get together to go to the movies. The group has to decide what movie to see from a few selections, using a negotiation process. Then there is a point of consensus reached and you pick a movie. What we are doing with the MRS is similar." Zhang's research has been applied to construction, sorting, and even RoboCup.