Publications related to Collective animal behavior

Collective motion in a sheet of microswimmers

Self-propelled particles such as bacteria or algae swimming through a fluid are non-equilibrium systems where particle motility breaks microscopic detailed balance, often resulting in large-scale collective motion. Previous theoretical work has identified ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Predicting the long-term collective behaviour of fish pairs with deep learning

Francesco Mondada, Alexandre Massoud Alahi, Vaios Papaspyros

Modern computing has enhanced our understanding of how social interactions shape collective behaviour in animal societies. Although analytical models dominate in studying collective behaviour, this study introduces a deep learning model to assess social in ...

2024

Quantifying the biomimicry gap in biohybrid robot-fish pairs

Francesco Mondada, Vaios Papaspyros

Biohybrid systems in which robotic lures interact with animals have become compelling tools for probing and identifying the mechanisms underlying collective animal behavior. One key challenge lies in the transfer of social interaction models from simulatio ...

2024

Human-Robot Swarm Interaction: An Explorative Path to Foster Complex Systems Understanding

Hala Khodr

Order, regularities, and patterns are ubiquitous around us. A flock of birds maneuvering in the sky, the self-organization of social insects, a global pandemic or a traffic jam are examples of complex systems where the macroscopic patterns arise from the m ...

EPFL2023

Small Obstacle in a Large Polar Flock

Ignacio Pagonabarraga Mora

We show that arbitrarily large polar flocks are susceptible to the presence of a single small obstacle. In a wide region of parameter space, the obstacle triggers counterpropagating dense bands leading to reversals of the flow. In very large systems, these ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2022

Hybrid Flock - Formation Control Algorithms

Alcherio Martinoli, Cyrill Silvan Baumann, Jonas Perolini, Emna Tourki

Two prominent categories for achieving coordinated multirobot displacement are flocking and navigation in formation. Both categories have their own body of literature and characteristics, including their respective advantages and disadvantages. While typic ...

Springer Nature Switzerland2022

Vision-based Flocking in Aerial Robot Swarms

Fabian Maximilian Schilling

Aerial robot swarms have the potential to perform time-critical and dangerous tasks such as disaster response without compromising human safety. However, their reliance on external infrastructure such as global positioning for localization and wireless net ...

EPFL2022

Gazebo Fluids: SPH-based simulation of fluid interaction with articulated rigid body dynamics

Auke Ijspeert, Jonathan Patrick Arreguit O'Neill, Wei Wang, Emmanouil Angelidis

Physical simulation is an indispensable component of robotics simulation platforms that serves as the basis for a plethora of research directions. Looking strictly at robotics, the common characteristic of the most popular physics engines, such as ODE, DAR ...

IEEE2022

Hydrodynamic synchronization and clustering in ratcheting colloidal matter

Ignacio Pagonabarraga Mora

Ratchet transport systems are widespread in physics and biology; however, the effect of the dispersing medium in the collective dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium systems has been often overlooked. We show that, in a traveling wave magnetic ratchet, long ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2022

Mean-Field Games And Swarms Dynamics In Gaussian And Non-Gaussian Environments

Max-Olivier Hongler

The collective behaviour of stochastic multi-agents swarms driven by Gaussian and non-Gaussian environments is analytically discussed in a mean-field approach. We first exogenously implement long range mutual interactions rules with strengths that are weig ...

AMER INST MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES-AIMS2020

Strategies to modulate zebrafish collective dynamics with a closed-loop biomimetic robotic system

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

The objective of this study is to integrate biomimetic robots into small groups of zebrafish and to modulate their collective behaviours. A possible approach is to have the robots behave like sheepdogs. In this case, the robots would behave like a differen ...

2020

Bidirectional interactions facilitate the integration of a robot into a shoal of zebrafish Danio rerio

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Vaios Papaspyros, Bertrand Eric Collignon

Many studies on collective animal behavior seek to identify the individual rules that underlie collective patterns. However, it was not until the recent advancements of micro-electronic and embedded systems that scientists were able to create mixed groups ...

2019

Designing Minimal and Scalable Insect-Inspired Multi-Locomotion Millirobots

Jamie Paik, Zhenishbek Zhakypov, Kazuaki Mori

In ant colonies, collectivity enables division of labour and resources with great scalability. Beyond their intricate social behaviours, individuals of the genus Odontomachus, also known as trap-jaw ants, have developed remarkable multi-locomotion mechanis ...

2019

Design Methodology for Engineering Multifunctional Mesoscale Robots

Zhenishbek Zhakypov

In this thesis our research goal is to develop, study and demonstrate multifunctional multi-robot systems in mesoscale. Particularly, our goal is to study and demonstrate terrestrial multi-locomotion and collective behaviours with mesoscale robots, similar ...

EPFL2019

Biomimetic adaptive control of a deployable tensegrity structure

Ann Christine Sychterz

Biomimetic behavior includes aspects such as learning from previous experience, self-diagnosis, and adaptation. This thesis describes control methodologies that are essential to development towards biomimetic behavior of a complex deployable structure. Sim ...

EPFL2018

Micro-flock patterns and macro-clusters in chiral active Brownian disks

Chiral active particles (or self-propelled circle swimmers) feature a rich collective behavior, comprising rotating macro-clusters and micro-flock patterns which consist of phase-synchronized rotating clusters with a characteristic self-limited size. These ...

2018

Closed-loop interactions between a shoal of zebrafish and a group of robotic fish in a circular corridor

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

Collective behavior based on self-organization has been observed in populations of animals from insects to vertebrates. These findings have motivated engineers to investigate approaches to control autonomous multi-robot systems able to reproduce collective ...

Springer Verlag2018

How to Blend a Robot Within a Group of Zebrafish: Achieving Social Acceptance Through Real-Time Calibration of a Multi-level Behavioural Model

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

We have previously shown how to socially integrate a fish robot into a group of zebrafish thanks to biomimetic behavioural models. The models have to be calibrated on experimental data to present correct behavioural features. This calibration is essential ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2018

Designing a socially integrated mobile robot for ethological research

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Jean-Louis Deneubourg

A robot introduced into an animal group, accepted by the animals as conspecifics, and capable of interacting with them is an ecient tool for ethological research, particularly in studies of collective and social behaviour. In this paper, we present the imp ...

Elsevier2018

How mimetic should a robotic fish be to socially integrate into zebrafish groups ?

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet, Bertrand Eric Collignon

Biomimetic robots are promising tools in animal behavioural studies. If they are socially integrated in a group of animals, they can produce calibrated social stimuli to test the animal responses. However, the design of such social robots is challenging as ...

2018