Project name: Animal and robot Societies Self-organise and Integrate by Social Interaction (bees and fish)
Project acronym: ASSISIbf
Dates: 01.02.2013 - 31.07.2018
Total budget: 6 Million EUR
Funding: EU-FP7
Grant Agreement number: 601074
website: zool33.uni-graz.at/artlife/assisibf
ASSISIbf
The main goal of ASSISIbf is to establish a bio-hybrid society of robots and animals (honeybees and fish). Within the project, two novel robotic systems were developed, with built-in abilities to “learn” the social language of animals, and to influence their collective behaviour.
A network of static interactive robot units called CASUs (Combined Actuator Sensor Unit) was developed, capable of producing and sensing a variety of stimuli relevant for honeybee behaviour. The robots implemented into the experimental arena are shown in the figure.
Fish CASUs are designed as mobile robots capable of performing complex dynamic movements and mimicking the intricate behaviour of small live fish species in constrained workspaces.
Distributed control methods using evolutionary computation were developed for the robotic systems, adapting robot behaviour to the observed animal behaviour, thus enabling the establishment of a self-organising bio-hybrid society of robots and animals. Such a society can then then pursue a common goal, which can be defined by human “users” of the system. One of the showcase examples is a graph theory problem solver (dominating set), where animals and robots, enhanced with a human-designed decision algorithm, together search the solution space, yielding a close-to-optimal solution in constant time.
This project is developed by:
- University of Graz – Artificial Life Lab (AT)
- CYBERTRONICA - Research Center of Advanced Robotics and Environmental Science (CH)
- University of Zagreb – Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, LARICS (HR)
- Université Paris Diderot – LIED (FR)
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – LSRO (CH)
- FCiências.ID – Associação para a Investigação e Desenvolvimento de Ciências (PT)
News
An article on an international EU FP7 project we worked on, ASSISIbf, was published in the newest issue (27 March 2019) of the magazine Science Robotics, and our professor Stjepan Bogdan is one of the authors of the paper. The article is titled "Robots mediating interactions between animals for interspecies collective behaviors" and it deals with the interesting results of this unusual robotics project. The article abstract is available on this link, while the full article is available via the official website of the magazine for AAAS members and registered users.
On 16 January 2019, our professor Stjepan Bogdan took part in a TV show titled Treći Element (Third Element) on the Croatian National Television, where he discussed the ASSISIbf project with the guests and hosts, talked about what biomimetics is and how it can be applied, as well as how nature and robotics can work together. We would like to thank Treći Element for the invitation - you can watch the whole episode of the show by following this link (in Croatian).
On October 10th, 2018, an interview by our professor Stjepan Bogdan was published in the local business weekly, Lider. In the interview, prof. Bogdan talked about all things ASSISIbf - he explained what exactly the project was about, how the various experiments with bees and fish were conducted, what technology was used and how it was done, what our Faculty's role was in all of this, and finally what results were found and what conclusions were made during the project. You can find the whole interview (in Croatian) by following this link.
Our professor Stjepan Bogdan went to the AI2FUTURE conference, which was held on 11th and 12th October 2018 at the Algebra LAB in Zagreb, Croatia. He was an invited lecturer and held a presentation titled "Swarm Intelligence in Animal and Robot Societies" based on the recently finished ASSISI project, the research was done as part of it and the findings of the project. We hope to take part in this and other such conferences in the future, too!
Our Prof. Stjepan Bogdan, Ivana Mikolić and Marsela Polić went to Brussels on 22-25 September to attend the final review meeting for the ASSISIbf project. ASSISI started five years ago and is the last FP7 project at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, as well as the financially biggest one. At the meeting, the project was discussed in detail and the final review was a success. Congratulations to all the participants!
Our Lab members, specifically Prof. Stjepan Bogdan, Karlo Griparić (a LARICS Alumni) and Marsela Polić went to Linz in Austria from the 6th to the 10th of September, 2018. There they took part in this year's Ars Electronica Festival and presented the ASSISIbf project they've been working on. Our team conducted experiments with bees, fish and robots, all of which were developed as part of the project. This is the second time ASSISI has been presented at Ars Electronica, the first being in 2016.
Prof. Stjepan Bogdan attended on the 7th ASSISI General Assembly meeting in Lisbon, held on October 26th, 2016. Prof. Bogdan presented the work done by LARICS team, including the developed interactive arena, visual bee tracking software, bee density estimation by neutral network and results obtained in the successful cooperation between honeybee society and multi-agent system based on consensus algorithm.
On 16 December 2015, the ASSISIbf LARICS team organized a training at the local Faculty for their master students. The purpose of the training was to present, through selected lectures and a practical session, the overall goals of the ASSISIbf project and the results accomplished in the first half of the project.
Within the last two weeks, two of our ongoing projects were shown and discussed on the Croatian television, in the show called Znanstveni krugovi (Scientific circles). Damjan Miklić and Tomislav Haus presented the Assisi project and Frano Petric and Sanja Šimleša presented the ASSISI project.
The 3rd internal training for the ASSISIbf project has been held last week at the Artificial Life Lab in Graz. The LARICS team introduced our partners from Graz, Lisbon and Lausanne to the new CASU array that we have been developing during the past months.
LARICS had two papers presented at the 2015 IEEE Sensor Applications Symposium that was held from April 13-15 in Zadar, Croatia. Our PhD student Karlo Griparić presented the paper entitled “Combined Actuator Sensor Unit for Interaction with Honeybees”, describing the newest results of the on-going FP7 project ASSISI. Dr. Damir Arbula presented the paper entitled “Microimmune Algorithm for Sensor Network Localization”, describing the key results of his doctoral dissertation. Prof. Zdenko Kovačić is the coauthor of the second paper together with a LARICS PhD student Slaven Glumac, also participated in this very well organized event in the beautiful city of Zadar.
LARICS researchers Dr. Damjan Miklić, Karlo Griparić, and Tomislav Haus attended the ASSISI_bf general assembly meeting in Lisbon, held on October 8th, 2013. The meeting was held at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon.
Our prof. Stjepan Bogdan presented the paper “ASSISI: Charged Hot Bees Shakin’ in the Spotlight” at the 2013 IEEE 7th Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, Philadelphia, USA, 9-13 September 2013. The paper presents the concepts and initial results of ASSISI_bf project. During his stay in the USA, Prof. Bogdan visited the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab and talked with Prof. Paul Oh, director of the laboratory.
LARICS professors Zdenko Kovačić and Stjepan Bogdan took part in the panel session “Advanced Cooperative Systems – Research Challenges and Application Opportunities” which was held at the International Conference on Computer as a Tool EUROCON 2013 in Zagreb, where they presented the research goals and results of two LARICS FP7 projects, EC-SAFEMOBIL and ASSISI.
Professor Bogdan presented the ASSISI project to our Faculty in a one-hour talk. The talk, organized as part of the ACROSS Colloquia lecture series, filled the TCR auditorium up to the very last seat, setting a new record for Colloquia attendance.
The ASSISIbf project, part of the FP7 FOCAS initiative, has started on February 1st, 2018. The goal of the project is to develop technological tools that will enable real-time interaction with bee and fish societies and ultimately gain new insights into the self-organization mechanisms of collective systems.