Flora Robotica – Mixed Societies of Symbiotic Robot-Plant Bio-Hybrids

Besides the life-as-it-could-be driver of artificial life research there is also the concept of extending natural life by creating hybrids or mixed societies that are built from both natural and artificial components. In this paper, we motivate and present the research program of the project flora robotica. We present our concepts of control, hardware de-sign, modeling, and human interaction along with preliminary experiments. Our objective is to develop and to investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between robots and natural plants and to explore the potentials of a plant-robot society able to produce archi-tectural artifacts and living spaces. These robot-plant bio-hybrids create synergies that allow for new functions of plants and robots. They also create novel design opportunities for an architecture that fuses the design and construction phase. The bio-hybrid is an example of mixed societies between ‘hard artificial and ‘wet natural life, which enables an interaction between natural and artificial ecologies. They form an embodied, self-organizing, and distributed cognitive system which is supposed to grow and develop over long periods of time resulting in the creation of meaningful architectural structures. A key idea is to assign equal roles to robots and plants in order to create a highly integrated, symbiotic system. Besides the gain of knowledge, this project has the objective to cre-ate a bio-hybrid system with a defined function and application – growing architectural artifacts

Development of a low-cost robotic squirrel for the study of small animal behavior

This project focuses on building a low-cost remote controlled Robot Squirrel to support the study of small animal behavior. It can also be implemented as an educational tool for all the stages of the educational systems, from elementary to university level. It is a ground-based motion robot, which is driven at variable speeds utilizing slip steering (a method similar to the motion of a tank) which can be moved in any desired direction. It supports an on-board video system to record, and monitor various behavioral patterns of animals, primarily squirrels in this project even from a distance. It also comprises of an audio system which can record and playback sounds to the animals and a simple robot arm-like structure with two degree of freedom controlled by servos, which acts as a nut delivery system to the animals. An Android smart phone application was developed to control the motion and speed of the robot and other operational controls in the system, like record and playback control and also the movement of the robot arm. Arduino Uno, an ATmega328 based microcontroller board acts as the major control unit of the entire system. A Bluetooth module acts as an interface between the Arduino and the smart phone supporting the control and operation of the Robotic Squirrel

Perception and Behavior of InsBot : Robot-Animal Interaction Issues

This paper describes the hardware and behavior implementation of a miniature robot, in size of a match box, that is able to interact with cockroaches. The robot is equipped with two micro-processors dedicated to hardware processing and behavior generation. It is also equipped with 12 infra-red proximity sensors, 2 light sensors, a linear camera and a battery that allows 3 hours autonomy. The robot can discriminate cockroaches, other robots, environment boundaries and shelters. It has also three means of communication: a wireless module for monitoring and logging, an IR remote receiver for fast supervision of biological experiment and a simple local communication protocol via infrared proximity sensors to detect robots in short range

Using robots to understand animal cognition

In recent years, robotic animals and humans have been used to answer a variety of questions related to behavior. In the case of animal behavior, these efforts have largely been in the field of behavioral ecology. They have proved to be a useful tool for this enterprise as they allow the presentation of naturalistic social stimuli whilst providing the experimenter with full control of the stimulus. In interactive experiments, the behavior of robots can be controlled in a manner that is impossible with real animals, making them ideal instruments for the study of social stimuli in animals. This paper provides an overview of the current state of the field and considers the impact that the use of robots could have on fundamental questions related to comparative psychology: namely, perception, spatial cognition, social cognition, and early cognitive development. We make the case that the use of robots to investigate these key areas could have an important impact on the field of animal cognition

Interactive Biorobotics

What can interactive robots offer to the study of social behaviour? Philosophical reflections about the use of robotic models in animal research have focused so far on methods (including the so-called synthetic method) involving robots which do not interact with the target system. Yet, leading researchers have claimed that interactive robots may constitute powerful experimental tools to study collective behaviour. Can they live up to these epistemic expectations? This question is addressed here by focusing on a particular experimental methodology involving interactive robots which has been often adopted in animal research. This methodology is shown to differ from other robot-supported methods for the study of animal behaviour analysed in the philosophical literature, chiefly including the synthetic method. It is also discussed whether biomimicry (i.e., similarity between the robot and the target animal in behaviour, appearance, and internal mechanisms) and acceptability (i.e., whether or not the robot is accepted as a conspecific by the animal) are necessary for an interactive robot to be sensibly used in animal research according to this method

Interactive Biorobotics

What can interactive robots offer to the study of social behaviour? Philosophical reflections about the use of robotic models in animal research have focused so far on methods (including the so-called synthetic method) involving robots which do not interact with the target system. Yet, leading researchers have claimed that interactive robots may constitute powerful experimental tools to study collective behaviour. Can they live up to these epistemic expectations? This question is addressed here by focusing on a particular experimental methodology involving interactive robots which has been often adopted in animal research. This methodology is shown to differ from other robot-supported methods for the study of animal behaviour analysed in the philosophical literature, chiefly including the synthetic method. It is also discussed whether biomimicry (i.e., similarity between the robot and the target animal in behaviour, appearance, and internal mechanisms) and acceptability (i.e., whether or not the robot is accepted as a conspecific by the animal) are necessary for an interactive robot to be sensibly used in animal research according to this method