An international team of researchers used honeybees as inspiration to teach robots to recognize human gestures and relay them with their own “waggle dance.”
An international team of researchers has developed a gesture identification system based on honeybees that will allow robots to communicate with one another by “dancing” with a coordinated set of gestures to convey information. The findings were published in the journal Frontiers.
When a honey bee discovers a patch of flowers from which it can extract nectar, it returns to the hive to notify the other bees. Once there, it performs a “waggle dance” to alert other bees to the location of the flower patch. Other bees interpret the dance’s movements and duration to determine the location of the flower patch in relation to the beehive. A similar technique was used by the researchers to ‘teach’ two robots to communicate through dance.
“A visual communication system for robots with onboard cameras is developed, with algorithms that allow the robots to interpret what they see.” senior author Abhra Roy Chowdhury said, “Humans and robots communicate using gestures, such as a raised hand with a closed fist.” Chowdhury is the director of the Robotics Innovation Lab at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru’s Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing.
Two robots that were used as stand-ins for package handling robots were used to create a proof-of-concept for this communication system by Chowdhury and his co-author Kaustubh Joshi, a doctoral student and research assistant at the University of Maryland.
Various digital networks, including wireless communication, are frequently used by robots to exchange information with one another. Chowdhury, however, asserts that there may be circumstances, such as in disaster areas or during spacewalks, where robot labor is needed but network links are not available. The system has the potential to be scaled up because the robots employed basic cameras in the study to recognize the movements.
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