Towards bio-hybrid systems made of social animals and robots

For making artificial systems collaborate with group-living animals, the scientific challenge is to build artificial systems that can perceive, communicate to, interact with and adapt to animals. When such capabilities are available then it should be possible to built cooperative relationships between artificial systems and animals. Machines In this framework, machines do not replace the living agents but collaborate and bring new capabilities into the resulting mixed group. On the one hand, such artificial systems offer new types of sensors, actuators and communication opportunities for living systems; on the other hand the animals bring their cognitive and biological capabilities into the artificial systems. Novel bio-hybrid modeling frameworks should be developed to streamline the implementation issues and allow for major time saving in the design and building processes of artificial agents. We expect strong impacts on the design of new intelligent systems by merging the best of the living systems with the best of ICT systems.