Credit: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Fish and bees rarely, if ever, have a chance to interact. However, engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne found that, with the use of a robot translator, the two distinctly different species are able to communicate with each other.
The animals have the ability to to send signals back and forth which allows them to demonstrate coordinated decisions.
Previously, robots that were designed for animal communication usually involved only one species. This limited the research in terms of bringing in unique species-reliant perceptual abilities and the kinds of behaviours in the same system. Similar experiments have been carried out in groups of cockroaches, chickens and fish. In the case of the fish, the robot was planted inside a shoal of fish, acting as a spy and able to direct their movements.
The new study took this to the next level and introduced honeybees to zebrafish, two species of animal that rarely have the chance to meet or communicate.
The scientists also decided to conduct the tests in two different locations. The bees were in Austria and the fish in Switzerland.
Each group of animals had a robot translator inside the group. The robot would release signals that are unique to the species. The bee robots mostly emitted a vibration, fluctuated air movements and temperature changes. The fish robots would emit behavioral and visual clues, such as tail movements and colours.
The robots then documented and exchanged the information with each other and the data was translated into the corresponding signals of the other species.
At first the experiment resulted in chaos but after around 25 minutes, the animals began to show coordinated responses. The fish swam anticlockwise and the bees swarmed around one of the robot terminals.
"The robots acted as if they were negotiators and interpreters in an international conference," said Francesco Mondada, a professor at the BioRobotics Laboratory of EPFL. He also said that the two species slowly evolved a shared decision as a result of the exchanges of information.
This experiment may help robotics experts devise more efficient ways for machines to gather data and translate signals. Biologists may also be interested in the findings as the study may lead to better comprehension of animal interactions and behaviour.
The research team believes that there work has numerous possibilities and applications in the real world. For example, the technology could potentially be used to refrain birds from flying over airports, and to direct pollinator bees away from crops sprayed with pesticides.
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