  The precise and continuous tracking of millimetric-sized walkers --such as
ants-- is quite important in behavioral studies. However, due to technical
limitations, most studies concentrate on trajectories within arenas no more
than 100 times bigger than the size of the walker or longer trajectories at the
expense of either accuracy or continuity. Our work describes a scientific
instrument designed to push the boundaries of precise and continuous motion
analysis up to 1000 body lengths or more. It consists of a mobile robotic
platform that uses Digital Image Processing techniques to track the targets in
real time by calculating their spatial position. During the experiments, all
the images are stored, and afterwards processed to estimate with higher
precision the path traced by the walkers. Some preliminary results achieved
using the proposed tracking system are presented.
