Social Integrating Robots Suggest Mitigation Strategies for Ecosystem Decay

Abstract

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 undertaken first steps to generate the required prerequisites for such a technology-based conservation biology approach. Our main idea is to stabilise and support broken ecosystems by introducing artificial members, robots, that are able to blend into the ecosystem’s regulatory feedback loops and can modulate natural organisms’ local densities through participation in those feedback loops. These robots are able to inject information that can be gathered using technology and to help the system in processing available information with technology. In order to understand the key principles of how these robots are capable of modulating the behaviour of large populations of living organisms based on interacting with just a few individuals, we develop novel mathematical models that focus on important behavioural feedback loops. These loops produce relevant group-level effects, allowing for robotic modulation of collective decision making in social organisms. A general understanding of such systems through mathematical models is necessary for designing future organism-interacting robots in an informed and structured way, which maximises the desired output from a minimum of intervention. Such models also help to unveil the commonalities and specificities of the individual implementations and allow predicting the outcomes of microscopic behavioural mechanisms on the ultimate macroscopic-level effects. We found that very similar models of interaction can be successfully used in multiple very different organism groups and behaviour types (honeybee aggregation, fish shoaling, and plant growth). Here we also report experimental data from biohybrid systems of robots and living organisms. Our mathematical models serve as building blocks for a deep understanding of these biohybrid systems. Only if the effects of autonomous robots onto the environment can be sufficiently well predicted can such robotic systems leave the safe space of the lab and can be applied in the wild to be able to unfold their ecosystem-stabilising potential.

Simple Physical Interactions Yield Social Self-Organization in Honeybees

“…There is also an application aspect to be considered here: Understanding the complex adaptive system at the core of honeybee colonies can help in designing novel smart beehives, in which technological devices are capable of producing exactly these physical stimuli and may thus exert a regulatory support for colonies in distress, e.g., by motivating them to keep up brood production in adverse environments or colony situations. We see this as a potential cornerstone in developing modern "smart beehives" that go beyond mere sensing by actively promoting the stability and robustness of the colony [34,35].…”

A Minimally Invasive Approach Towards “Ecosystem Hacking” With Honeybees

“…The approach to incorporate supportive technology into social insect colonies, or into other animal societies, is called “Organismic Augmentation” ( Schmickl et al, 2021 ; Ilgün et al, 2021 ). The research project RoboRoyale works towards augmenting superorganisms with supportive technology in a novel way, by concentrating on the honeybee queen.…”

“…How the technological augmentation of superorganisms, for example, honeybee colonies, can be achieved to create novel biohybrid entities has been demonstrated in various research projects in the past ( Schmickl et al, 2021 ). Figures 10E–G depict which methods are applied most often:…”

“…In some sense, this experiment hinted how ecological linkages could be artificially created and showed that it is possible for two groups of organisms very distant from each other (spatially, developmentally, temporally, and on a size scale) to jointly make self-organized collective decisions, a process that can be interpreted as the first artificially created ecological interaction ( Bonnet et al, 2019 ). We call this paradigm of ecosystem stabilization “Ecosystem Hacking” (EH) ( Ilgün et al, 2021 ; Schmickl et al, 2021 ). The social integration of robots into animal societies is a form of “Organismic Augmentation” (OA), as it augments an existing animal superorganism with new capabilities, e.g.…”

Oceans of plenty? Challenges, advancements, and future directions for the provision of evidence-based fisheries management advice

“…Similarly, passive acoustic networks are available at basin scales to track phenology and distribution for mobile protected species (Davis et al 2020 ), allowing improved inference about the seasonal overlap between populations and conventional surveys. Biohybrid systems (e.g., ‘FishBots’ that can mimic biological counterparts) also show promise for enabling in situ data collection (Schmickl et al 2021 ). Future autonomous sampling research should focus on the evolution of joint survey platforms that combine multiple collection methods without substantially increasing vessel days or labor requirements (e.g., simultaneous collection of acoustic, video, oceanographic, and environmental DNA, eDNA, data).…”