Publications related to Human interactions with insects

Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies

Francesco Mondada, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak, Raphael Cherfan

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where collaboration and division of labor enhance survival of the whole colony, and are thus considered “superorganisms”. Historically, studying behaviors involving ...

2024

A Biohybrid Superorganism - Investigating honeybees' collective behaviors via interactive robotics

Rafael Botner Barmak

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where the collaborative efforts of "simple" individuals can lead to the emergence of complex dynamics. The reliance of each organism on the collective is so great t ...

EPFL2024

Deformation of porous flexible strip in low and moderate Reynolds number flows

François Gallaire, Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Matteo Pezzulla

We present results from a combined experimental and numerical investigation of the fluid-structure interaction of cantilevered porous flexible strips, towed through a fluid bath. We characterize the steady-state deformation of the strips and their associat ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2020

Insect-Inspired Visual Perception for Flight Control and Collision Avoidance

Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur

Flying robots are increasingly used for tasks such as aerial mapping, fast exploration, video footage and monitoring of buildings. Autonomous flight at low altitude in cluttered and unknown environments is an active research topic because it poses challen ...

EPFL2019

The role of optic flow pooling in insect flight control in cluttered environments

Dario Floreano, Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur, Emily Baird

Flight through cluttered environments, such as forests, poses great challenges for animals and machines alike because even small changes in flight path may lead to collisions with nearby obstacles. When flying along narrow corridors, insects use the magnit ...

Nature Research2019

Locomotion Dynamics for Bio-inspired Robots with Soft Appendages: Application to Flapping Flight and Passive Swimming

Yannick Morel, Mathieu Porez

In animal locomotion, either in fish or flying insects, the use of flexible terminal organs or appendages greatly improves the performance of locomotion (thrust and lift). In this article, we propose a general unified framework for modeling and simulating ...

Springer2017

Oral transfer of chemical cues, growth proteins and hormones in social insects

Laure Menin, Oksana Riba Grognuz, Daniel Ortiz Trujillo, Laurent Keller

Social insects frequently engage in oral fluid exchange trophallaxis between adults, and between adults and larvae. Although trophallaxis is widely considered a food-sharing mechanism, we hypothesized that endogenous components of this fluid might underlie ...

Elife Sciences Publications Ltd2016

Infection Dynamics and Immune Response in a Newly Described Drosophila-Trypanosomatid Association

Bruno Lemaitre, Anna Dostalova

Trypanosomatid parasites are significant causes of human disease and are ubiquitous in insects. Despite the importance of Drosophila melanogaster as a model of infection and immunity and a long awareness that trypanosomatid infection is common in the genus ...

American Society for Microbiology2015

Clocks do not tick in unison: isolation of Clock and vrille shed new light on the clockwork model of the sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis

Antonio Carlos Alves Meireles Filho

Background: Behavior rhythms of insect vectors directly interfere with the dynamics of pathogen transmission to humans. The sand fly Lutzomyia longipalpis is the main vector of visceral leishmaniasis in America and concentrates its activity around dusk. De ...

2015

Evolution of division of labor in artificial societies

Pawel Lichocki

Natural and artificial societies often divide the workload between specialized members. For example, an ant worker may preferentially perform one of many tasks such as brood rearing, foraging and nest maintenance. A robot from a rescue team may specialize ...

EPFL2013

Hemispherical Multiple Camera System for High Resolution Omni-Directional Light Field Imaging

Alexandre Schmid, Yusuf Leblebici, Hossein Afshari, Abdulkadir Akin, Kerem Seyid, Ömer Cogal

Inspiration from light field imaging concepts has led to the construction of multi-aperture imaging systems. Using multiple cameras as individual apertures is a topic of high relevance in the light field imaging domain. The need for wide field-of-view (FOV ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2013

Plenoptic Spherical Sampling

Pascal Frossard, Pierre Vandergheynst, Luigi Bagnato

We present a novel plenoptic sampling scheme that permits an efficient representation of the full light ray field in a space limited by a convex closed surface. We show that a convenient way to sample the light ray field around an observer consists in usin ...

2012

Limitations of response thresholds models of division of labor

Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller, Pawel Lichocki

High levels of cooperation are often cited as the primary reasons for the ecological success of social insects. In social insects, workers perform a multitude of tasks such as foraging, nest construction and brood rearing without central control of how wor ...

The MIT Press2012

Neural networks as mechanisms to regulate division of labor

Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller, Pawel Lichocki

In social insects, workers perform a multitude of tasks such as foraging, nest construction and brood rearing without central control of how work is allocated among individuals. It has been suggested that workers choose a task by responding to stimuli gath ...

2012

Enhanced Omnidirectional Image Reconstruction Algorithm and its Real-Time Hardware

Alexandre Schmid, Yusuf Leblebici, Hossein Afshari, Abdulkadir Akin

Omnidirectional stereoscopy and depth estimation are complex problems of image processing to which the Panoptic camera offers a novel solution. The Panoptic camera is a biologically-inspired vision sensor made of multiple cameras. It is a polydioptric syst ...

2012

A Spherical Multi-camera System with Real-time Omnidirectional Video Acquisition Capability

Alexandre Schmid, Yusuf Leblebici, Vladan Popovic, Hossein Afshari

A multi-camera system inspired from the visual system of flying insects is introduced which is referred to as the Panoptic camera. In the Panoptic system each camera is mounted over a hemispherical geometry and has its own vision of surrounding and distinc ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2012

The AirBurr: A Flying Robot That Can Exploit Collisions

Dario Floreano, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Adrien Briod, Adam Klaptocz

Research made over the past decade shows the use of increasingly complex methods and heavy platforms to achieve autonomous flight in cluttered environments. However, efficient behaviors can be found in nature where limited sensing is used, such as in insec ...

2012

Holocene history of Lac des Lauzons (2180 m a.s.l.), reconstructed from multiproxy analyses of Coleoptera, plant macroremains and pollen (Hautes-Alpes, France)

Alexandre Buttler

A 1.70 m core extracted from the Lac des Lauzons, Haut Champsaur, French Alps, at 2180 m altitude, provided a detailed Holocene record of beetles, pollen and plant macrofossils, enabling the reconstruction of local palaeoenvironmental changes during the la ...

2011

Task-dependent influence of genetic architecture and mating frequency on division of labour in social insect societies

Dario Floreano, Laurent Keller

Division of labour is one of the most prominent features of social insects. The efficient allocation of individuals to different tasks requires dynamic adjustment in response to environmental perturbations. Theoretical models suggest that the colony-level ...

Springer Verlag2010

Vision-based control of near-obstacle flight

Dario Floreano, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Antoine Beyeler

This paper presents a novel control strategy, which we call optiPilot, for autonomous flight in the vicinity of obstacles. Most existing autopilots rely on a complete 6-degree-of-freedom state estimation using a GPS and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) a ...

2009