Robots communicating with fish: Investigating the role of electric signals and locomotor displays following episodes of mutual attention in weakly electric fish

机器人与鱼交流：研究弱电鱼相互关注后电信号和运动显示的作用

• 批准号: 437554957
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Gerhard von der Emde
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Dahlem Center for Machine Learning and Robotics (DCMLR)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/437554957?language=en
• 关键词: Robots; communicating; fish; Investigating; role

Animals that live in social groups must interact in order to stay together and move collectively. A fundamental biological question is which rules govern social interactions and cause group members to coordinate their movements and come to joint decisions. In fish shoals, individuals exchange information through different sensory channels, e.g. through vision or the mechanosensory lateral line system. In previous studies, we have shown that mormyrid weakly electric fish rely almost exclusively on their electro-sensory modality for group coherence and shoal formation. Individuals emit and perceive electric signals to localize and approach conspecifics within the group, and even fully accept an artificial, bodiless signal source as communication partner. Besides emitting context-specific signal patterns, shoaling mormyrids frequently engage in episodes of interactive electric signalling by synchronizing their signals to each other. However, it is not yet known which signals are actually exchanged via this channel, what these signals mean and which behaviour they evoke in other fish.In this project, we want to investigate the basic processes that support social interactions in shoals of weakly electric fish by developing a biomimetic electric fish robot that serves as communication partner in a group. By designing a fully interactive robot, which operates in closed-loop both electrically and locomotory, we will have full control over the cues we inject into the social system.One of our main goals is to understand why two group members often synchronize their signals when they approach each other. We will test the hypothesis that this behaviour is a strategy to address another individual in the group and to provoke "social attention" - i.e., a means for two animals to open an exclusive communication channel through which information can be exchanged, expressed by the behaviour that follows the electrical synchronization.By introducing a fully interactive robot into the group, which is able to establish and sustain mutual synchronization episodes between fish and robot, we will investigate the effect of ensuing locomotor and/or electrical interactions on the behaviour of the fish. The robot’s behaviour will be based on an analysis of post-sync behaviours in all-fish groups in order to find out what happens during and immediately after two fish have synchronized, and which actions can transmit information to another individual. By extracting behavioural properties at the level of the individual and the group, we will assess differences between fully interactive robot behaviours and behaviours that lack either the electrical or the locomotor interactive component, respectively. The robot’s effectiveness to alter the behaviour of single fish and the whole group will be assessed by employing modern statistical methods to quantify information transfer between individuals.

生活在社会群体中的动物必须相互作用才能保持在一起并集体行动。一个基本的生物学问题是，哪些规则支配着社会互动，并使群体成员协调行动，共同做出决定。在鱼群中，个体通过不同的感觉通道交换信息，例如通过视觉或机械感觉侧线系统。在以前的研究中，我们已经表明，mormyrid弱电鱼几乎完全依靠它们的电感觉模式来实现群体一致性和鱼群形成。个体通过发射和感知电信号来定位和接近群体内的同类，甚至完全接受一个人工的、无形的信号源作为交流伙伴。除了发出特定环境的信号模式外，鱼群还经常通过相互同步信号来参与互动电信号的发作。然而，目前还不知道哪些信号实际上是通过这个通道交换的，这些信号意味着什么，以及它们在其他鱼类中引起了哪些行为。在这个项目中，我们想通过开发一种仿生电鱼机器人来研究支持弱电鱼群社会互动的基本过程，该机器人可以作为群体中的交流伙伴。通过设计一个完全互动的机器人，它在电力和运动上都是闭环的，我们将完全控制我们注入社会系统的线索。我们的主要目标之一是理解为什么两个群体成员在接近对方时经常同步信号。我们将测试这样一种假设，即这种行为是一种应对群体中另一个个体并引起“社会注意”的策略——也就是说，两只动物打开一个专有的沟通渠道，通过这个渠道可以交换信息，通过电子同步后的行为来表达。通过将一个完全互动的机器人引入群体，它能够建立和维持鱼和机器人之间的相互同步事件，我们将研究随后的运动和/或电相互作用对鱼行为的影响。机器人的行为将基于对全鱼群同步后行为的分析，以找出两条鱼同步期间和同步后立即发生的情况，以及哪些动作可以将信息传递给另一个个体。通过提取个体和群体层面的行为属性，我们将分别评估完全互动的机器人行为和缺乏电子或运动互动成分的机器人行为之间的差异。机器人改变单个鱼和整个群体行为的有效性将通过采用现代统计方法来量化个体之间的信息传递来评估。