Publications by Francesco Mondada

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.

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 ...

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 ...

In this article we describe a methodology for evolving neurocontrollers of autonomous mobile robots without human intervention. The presentation, which spans from technological and methodological issues to several experimental results on evolution of physical mobile robots, covers both previous and recent work in the attempt to provide a unified picture within which the reader can compare the effects of systematic variations on the experimental settings. After describing some key principles for building mob

From perception to action and form action to perception, all elements of an autonomous agent are interdependent and need to be strongly coherent. The final behavior of the agent is the result of the global activity of this loop and every weakness of incoherence of a single element has strong consequences on the performances of the agent. We think that, for the purpose of building autonomous robots, all these elements need to be developed together in continuous interaction with the environment. We describe t

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

There is a large number of possible applications in the field of mobile robotics: Mail delivery robots, domestic or industrial vacuum cleaners, surveillance robots, demining robots and many others could be very interesting products. Despite this potential market and the actual technology, only few simple systems are commercially available. This proves that there are several important and problematic issues in this field, mainly at the intelligence level. As a reaction to the failure of the classical artific

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

For years research has focused on ways to allow remote access via standard communication networks to unique or expensive structures. With the growth of the Internet, one finds more and more devices connected to it. Despite the fact that one may spy on other people with hundreds of cameras, it is currently possible to interact only with a few robots, which often have restricted access. To use a camera over the web, the user usually just sits and watches or sometimes has the ability to choose different camera

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. Concepts and algorithms are explained through detailed diagrams and calculations. Elements of Robotics present

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 ...

Francesco Mondada

Chat with Graph Search

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

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

Evolutionary Neurocontrollers for Autonomous Mobile Robots

Evolution of neural control structures: Some experiments on mobile robots

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

Robots mediating interactions between animals for interspecies collective behaviors

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

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

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

Conception de structures neuronales pour le contrôle de robots mobiles autonomes

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

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

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

KhepOnTheWeb: open access to a mobile robot on the Internet

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

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

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

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

Elements of Robotics

Augmented Robotics for Learners: A Case Study on Optics