Publications by Francesco Mondada

Related publications (174)

Extending Sensory Capabilities of a Biohybrid System: Prediction of Honeycomb Fill

Cyril Felix Monette, Francesco Mondada, Robert Matthew Mills

Interactive robotics is increasingly used to investigate animal behaviour, including communication, mating and collective dynamics. An essential component for such systems is sensing the animals and the relevant aspects of the habitat to enable coherent cl ...

IEEE2025

A biohybrid interaction framework for the integration of robots in animal societies

Francesco Mondada, Vaios Papaspyros, Daniel Burnier, Raphael Cherfan

The collective behavior of animals has been traditionally studied through observation, quantitative models of behavior, and devices of low intelligence. Nowadays, the advancements in the field of robotics allow for closed-loop experiments that occur in rea ...

2023

How to Blend a Robot Within a Group of Zebrafish: Achieving Social Acceptance Through Real-Time Calibration of a Multi-level Behavioural Model

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

We have previously shown how to socially integrate a fish robot into a group of zebrafish thanks to biomimetic behavioural models. The models have to be calibrated on experimental data to present correct behavioural features. This calibration is essential ...

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG2018

Robots mediating interactions between animals for interspecies collective behaviors

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Robert Matthew Mills

Self-organized collective behavior has been analyzed in diverse types of gregarious animals. Such collective intelligence emerges from the synergy between individuals, which behave at their own time and spatial scales and without global rules. Recently, ro ...

2019

Segregation in swarms of mobile robots based on the Brazil nut effect

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat

We study a simple algorithm inspired by the Brazil nut effect for achieving segregation in a swarm of mobile robots. The algorithm lets each robot mimic a particle of a certain size and broadcast this information locally. The motion of each particle is con ...

IEEE Computer Society Press2009

Biohybrid Superorganisms—On the Design of a Robotic System for Thermal Interactions With Honeybee Colonies

Louis Arnaud Vahé Piotet, Francesco Mondada, Rafael Botner Barmak, Robert Matthew Mills, 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

Designing a socially integrated mobile robot for ethological research

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Jean-Louis Deneubourg

A robot introduced into an animal group, accepted by the animals as conspecifics, and capable of interacting with them is an ecient tool for ethological research, particularly in studies of collective and social behaviour. In this paper, we present the imp ...

Elsevier2018

Infiltrating the Zebrafish Swarm: Design, Implementation and Experimental Tests of a Miniature Robotic Fish Lure for Fish-Robot Interaction Studies

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet

Robotic fish are nowadays developed for various types of research, such as bio-inspired robotics, biomimetics and animal behavior studies. In the context of our research on the social interactions of the zebrafish Danio Rerio, we developed a miniature robo ...

Springer2015

Social Adaptation of Robots for Modulating Self-Organization in Animal Societies

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Robert Matthew Mills, Marcelo Elias de Oliveira

The goal of the work presented here is to influence the overall behaviour of specific animal societies by integrating computational mechatronic devices (robots) into those societies. To do so, these devices should be accepted by the animals as part of the ...

IEEE2014

Automated Calibration of a Biomimetic Space-Dependent Model for Zebrafish and Robot Collective Behaviour in a Structured Environment

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

Bio-hybrid systems made of robots and animals can be useful tools both for biology and robotics. To socially integrate robots into animal groups the robots should behave in a biomimetic manner with close loop interactions between robots and animals. Behavi ...

Springer2017

Cy-mag3D: a simple and miniature climbing robot with advance mobility in ferromagnetic environment

Francesco Mondada, Hannes Bleuler, Frédéric Rochat, Patrick Schoeneich

Cy-mag3D is a miniature climbing robot with advanced mobility and magnetic adhesion. It is very compact: a cylindrical shape with 28 mm of diameter and 62 mm of width. Its design is very simple: two wheels, hence two degrees of freedom, and an advanced mag ...

World Scientific2010

The role of feedback and guidance as intervention methods to foster computational thinking in educational robotics learning activities for primary school

Francesco Mondada, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy, Christian Giang, Morgane Solène Denise Chevalier, Vaios Papaspyros, Jean-Philippe Pellet, Evgeniia Bonnet

Computational thinking (CT) is considered an emerging competence domain linked to 21st-century competences, and educational robotics (ER) is increasingly recognised as a tool to develop CT competences. This is why researchers recommend developing intervent ...

2022

Who's Helping Who? When Students Use ChatGPT to Engage in Practice Lab Sessions

Jérôme Guillaume Brender, Francesco Mondada, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy, Engin Walter Bumbacher

Little is understood about how chatbots powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) impact teaching and learning, and how to effectively integrate them into educational practices. This study examined whether and how using ChatGPT in a graduate-level robotics c ...

Springer Nature Switzerland2024

Aseba Meets D-Bus: From the Depths of a Low-Level Event-

Francesco Mondada, Stéphane Magnenat

The robotics research community has clearly acknowledged the need of open and standard software stacks to promote reuse of code and developments. However, to date no particular project has prevailed. We suggest that one possible reason for this is that mos ...

2009

Developing STEM and Team-working Skills Through Collaborative Space Robotics Missions

Francesco Mondada, Evgeniia Bonnet

Building on the success of the first North-South cross-continental collaborative educational robotics mission held in November 2015 [1], this paper presents a practical model for scaling the event up into a program for developing countries, particularly th ...

IEEE2021

A Research-Practice Partnership to Introduce Computer Science in Secondary School: Lessons from a Pilot Program

Francesco Mondada, Barbara Bruno, Jessica Elke Dehler Zufferey, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy, Helena Kovacs, Jean-Philippe Pellet

Context: Introducing Computer Science (CS) into formal education can be challenging, notably when considering the numerous stakeholders involved which include the students, teachers, schools, and policy makers. We believe these perspectives should be con ...

2023

Augmented Robotics for Learners: A Case Study on Optics

Francesco Mondada, Wafa Monia Benkaouar Johal, Stéphane Magnenat, Amaury Robert Dame

In recent years, robots have been surfing on a trendy wave as standard devices for teaching programming. The tangibility of robotics platforms allows for collaborative and interactive learning. Moreover, with these robot platforms, we also observe the occu ...

IEEE2019

Closed-loop interactions between a shoal of zebrafish and a group of robotic fish in a circular corridor

Francesco Mondada, Alexey Gribovskiy, Frank Bonnet

Collective behavior based on self-organization has been observed in populations of animals from insects to vertebrates. These findings have motivated engineers to investigate approaches to control autonomous multi-robot systems able to reproduce collective ...

Springer Verlag2018

Bidirectional interactions facilitate the integration of a robot into a shoal of zebrafish Danio rerio

Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Vaios Papaspyros, Bertrand Eric Collignon

Many studies on collective animal behavior seek to identify the individual rules that underlie collective patterns. However, it was not until the recent advancements of micro-electronic and embedded systems that scientists were able to create mixed groups ...

2019

Design Methods for Miniature Underwater Soft Robots

Norbert Crot, Francesco Mondada, Frank Bonnet, Daniel Burnier

A robotic fish accepted by animals as conspecifics is a very powerful tool in behavioral biology. To obtain the acceptance of the device towards the animals, it should generate some visual stimuli that can be perceived by a living fish as attractive signal ...

Ieee2016