Sunday, December 30, 2007

Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices




I personally dont like cockroaches very much, but this experiment is amazing..


Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices, ETH Zuerich


Collective behavior based on self-organization has been shown in group-living animals from insects to vertebrates.

These findings have stimulated engineers to investigate approaches for the coordination of autonomous multirobot systems based on self-organization. In this experimental study, we show collective decision-making by mixed groups of cockroaches and socially integrated autonomous robots, leading to shared shelter selection.

Individuals, natural or artificial, are perceived as equivalent, and the collective decision emerges from nonlinear feedbacks based on local interactions.

Even when in the minority, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern not observed in their absence.

These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Winter in Austria




I wish you all a very Happy Christmas with some wintery pictures from close to where I live..