ABOVE: One-day-old honey bees gather around a heat-emitting robot (left) while zebrafish swim with a robot in a donut-shaped aquarium. When the bee and fish robots transmit information about the behavior of the surrounding animals, it influences the behavior of both groups.
FRANK BONNET/EPFL
A robot interacting with young honey bees in Graz, Austria, exchanged information with a robot swimming with zebrafish in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the robots’ communication influenced the behavior of each animal group, according to a study published in Science Robotics today (March 20).
“It’s the first time that people are using this kind of technology to have two different species communicate with each other,” says Simon Garnier, a complex systems biologist at New Jersey Institute of Technology who did not participate in the study. “It’s a proof of concept that you can have robots mediate interactions between distant groups.” He adds, however, that the specific applications of ...
