ASSISI: Charged Hot Bees Shakin' in the Spotlight

Abstract

In this article we describe the concept of generating a mixed society of honeybees and artificial (robotic) agents in the project ASSISI| <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">bf</sub> . We discuss the motivation of generating a mixed society as novel bio-hybrid system that can achieve self-awareness, self-regulation and environmental awareness through self-organization and collective information processing. In our approach the artificial agents communicate with the natural agents through 4 physical channels, which are emphasized in this article: temperature, vibration, electromagnetic fields, and light. We also discuss our methodology of automated model-generation and model-adaptation through evolutionary robotics principles.