Project description
The goal of the project was to develop and analyze the model of bee movement in a field of CASUs (Combined actuator sensor units), which could be later used as a part of EU project ASSISIbf („Animal and robot Societies Self-organize and Integrate by Social Interaction (bees and fish)”). ASSISIbf is project whose goal is to create robots that are able to develop communication channels to animal societies (bees and fish) on its own, which would later be used to lay new foundations on the way how humans can interfere with animal societies in order to manage the environment. The animals used in ASSISSIbf project are shown on images below.
Bees like heat, light and vibrations. In this project bee’s reaction and movement in a field with a temperature gradient was researched. Two models were proposed: one in which is assumed that the bee can feel and detect temperature gradient (possibly with tentacles) and another one in which is assumed that bee can detect temperature and also has a memory to log position and belonging temperature.
Data about bee’s real movement were acquired from video materials made on experimental setup. Image of real arena where 1 to 3 days old bees were recorded is shown in figure below. This “biological” part of project is done at TU Graz.
Moves were analyzed and compared with proposed models. In Enki simulator (image below) a control system for bees was implemented to visualize movement but also to enable future simulation of the whole system of bees and CASU units.
More details will be published soon.
Acknowledgement
This project was my Bachelor thesis project under the mentorship of Professor Stjepan Bogdan. The full text of bachelor thesis can be downloaded here (in Croatian unfortunately): Bachelor_thesis-text and the presentation from the thesis defense can be seen here: Bachelor_thesis-presentation
