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

1. Social Integration of Robots into Groups of Cockroaches to control Self-Organized Choices • Modeled collective shelter finding in cockroaches • Build “cockroach” robots to interact with/influence the cockroaches • Showed that the model was reasonably accurate • Showed that the robots could influence the collective decision making process

2. Summary Model actions were “stay, move outside, move inside” Decision making was based on amount of light and number of other cockroaches Robots were approximately cockroach sized and used cockroach pheromones to be accepted.

3. Concerns • Robot behaviors not presented in detail • Robots seemed to have a disproportional influence • 4 robots/12 cockroaches, but robots significantly swung shelter preference (Fig. 3) • Pheromones too strong or robot behavior too fixed? • How was “Frequency of selection determined”?

4. Abstract • 6 sentences • Broad topic/impact: “Collective behavior … shown in … from insects to vertebrates” • Practical impact and narrower topic: “… stimulated engineers to investigate … autonomous multibot systems…” • Results (3): “We show …” Significance: “Even when in the minority…” • Importance: “These results demonstrate the possibility of …”

5. Introduction (and Background) • 1st three paragraphs • Make the topic broad and important • Define the topic: “Self-organization is…” • Define broad area: “… occurs in eusocial insects, … arthropods, and vertebrates.” w/ lots of citations. • “… self-organization is used …” • Narrow focus • “… stimulated engineers to … “ • “… robots …” • Potential: “… they open the possibility …” • What the authors did: “Here we …”

6. Introduction • Broad and general to narrow and specific Lots of animals engage in self-organization Engineers are interested in self-organization Multi-bot systems and cockroaches

7. Background What others have done What hasn’t been done What should be done (“Thus, although X has been shown, Y has not been shown.”) “Robots … could then be used to [do Y]” What we did (show Y) “… study that makes the first steps towards [doing Y]”

8. Methods, Results, Conclusion • Methods: 3rd column of page 1 to middle column of page 3. Figure 1 gives a clear sense of what is happening • Results: middle column of page 3 to near end of 3rd column of page 3 (~1 full column plus figures) Mostly in the figures • Conclusion: last paragraph

9. Methods • Provide clear overview • Provide replicable details

10. Results • Mostly in the figures • Long captions – figures almost stand alone • Column arrangements in bar graphs not ideal(?) • Results text tells the reader the results” • “The first set of experiments showed … [Fig. X]” • “… robots were able to induce change … [Fig Y]” • “In some trials the choice was induced by the robots, and in others … The robots did not act as mere attractant but …”

11. Conclusion • Summary: “These results show …” • Emphasize contribution: “… we introduced …” • Future work: “This work could be extended to …” • Inspiring last words(?): “Animal societies could be one of the first biological systems where autonomous artifacts cooperate with living individuals to solve problems.”