Publications by Rafael Botner Barmak

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

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

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

On the use of photovoltaic modules as lightning detection sensors

Francesco Mondada, Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein, Mario Paolone, Rafael Botner Barmak, Hannes Kohlmann

2023

A robotic honeycomb for interaction with a honeybee colony

Francesco Mondada, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak

Robotic technologies have shown the capability to interact with living organisms and even to form integrated mixed societies composed of living and artificial agents. Biocompatible robots, incorporating sensing and actuation capable of generating and respo ...

2023

Social Integrating Robots Suggest Mitigation Strategies for Ecosystem Decay

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak

We develop here a novel hypothesis that may generate a general research framework of how autonomous robots may act as a future contingency to counteract the ongoing ecological mass extinction process. We showcase several research projects that have underta ...

2021

Bio-Hybrid Systems for Ecosystem Level Effects

Francesco Mondada, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Robert Thomas Edmund Mills, Matthieu Jean-Michel Philippe Broisin, Martina Szopek, Robert Matthew Mills, Rafael Botner Barmak

In a time marked by ecological decay and by the perspective of a severe backlash of this ecosystem decay and climate devastation onto human society, bold moves that employ novel technology to counteract this decline are required. We present a novel concept ...

MIT Press2021