Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to Control Self-Organized Choices

TLDR

Self‑organization drives collective behavior in animals from insects to vertebrates, inspiring engineers to develop multirobot coordination systems that treat natural and artificial agents equivalently, with decisions emerging from local nonlinear feedback. The study demonstrates that mixed cockroach–robot groups can collectively decide on shelter selection. The experiment used socially integrated autonomous robots mixed with cockroaches to observe shared shelter selection. Robots, even as a minority, can modulate collective decision‑making to produce novel global patterns, showing that autonomous devices can study and control self‑organized behaviors in animal groups.

Abstract

Collective behavior based on self-organization has been shown in group-living animals from insects to vertebrates. These findings have stimulated engineers to investigate approaches for the coordination of autonomous multirobot systems based on self-organization. In this experimental study, we show collective decision-making by mixed groups of cockroaches and socially integrated autonomous robots, leading to shared shelter selection. Individuals, natural or artificial, are perceived as equivalent, and the collective decision emerges from nonlinear feedbacks based on local interactions. Even when in the minority, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern not observed in their absence. These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals.