The consortium of HIVEOPOLIS consists of seven interdisciplinary research groups that all have a strong focus on understanding honeybees and other social insects.
University of Graz (UNIGRAZ, coordinator) AUT
The Artificial Life Lab of the University of Graz assembles researchers of various kinds of expertise ranging from programming to developing and constructing experimental setups, architecture and design, behavioural ecology, and honey bee biology. In the past, behavioural patterns of honeybees and fish have been implemented into groups of robots, and the communication of honey bees with fish was enabled via programming and technology. In this new project, HIVEOPOLIS, our aim is not to transfer behaviour from bees to robots but, for example, to communicate from robots to bees and to enable honey bee colonies to communicate with each other in order to strengthen them and to support their wellbeing.
Team Members:
Contact Person: Prof. Thomas Schmickl, The Artificial Life Lab of the University of Graz, Graz, Austria,+43 316 380 8759.
E-mail: thomas.schmickl@uni-graz.at
École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) CHE
The MOBOTS group of the Biorobotics Lab, of EPFL, is an internationally renowned research unit in the field of robotic system design. It has a large experience in the compact design of mobile and educational robots. Among recent results are robots for education, equipping thousands of schools, and autonomous robots interacting with zebrafish. MOBOTS has also previously developed robots that interact with other animals including cockroaches and chickens. Their central role in HIVEOPOLIS is to design the robotics parts of the hive and to ensure interactions between the robotics and both bees and other system interfaces.
Team Members:
Francesco Mondada
Professor
Francesco is a principal investigator.
Rafael Barmak
Rafael is a doctoral assistant.
Rob Mills
Rob is a scientific lead.
Matthieu Broisin
Matthieu is a doctoral assistant.
Contact person: Prof. Francesco Mondada, MOBOTS – BioROb – IBI – EPFL, Station 9, CH-1015 Lausanne, +41 21 693 73 57.
E-mail: francesco.mondada@epfl.ch
Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) BEL
The Biological and Artificial Self-organized Systems (BASS) lab of the Free University of Brussels gathers an interdisciplinary team of biologists, computer scientists, and theoreticians working on collective behaviour in biological and artificial systems. The unit, which is part of the Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, focuses on the experimental and theoretical study of social and gregarious species such as ants, cockroaches, fish, and others as well as on artificial systems with robot swarms and mixed societies with animal-robot interactions. In HIVEOPOLIS, our aim is to build mathematical models based on accumulated data to better understand, guide and predict collective behaviour of bee colonies.
Team Members:
Jean-Louis Deneubourg
Professor
Jean-Louis is a principal investigator.
Alexandre Campo
Alexandre is a senior researcher.
Stamatios Nicolis
Stamatios is a senior researcher.
Contact Person: Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Université Libre de Bruxelles,
Biological & Artificial Self-organized Systems, Boulevard du Triomphe 2 CP231, 1050 Bruxelles.
E-mail: jldeneub@ulb.ac.be
Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) DEU
The Biorobotics Lab at Free University Berlin is advancing the cross-pollination of computer science and biology. We have experience with robots as tools in biology to understand more about biological systems. We, for example, have built a honeybee robot to study the bee dance and fish robots for the analysis of collective behaviour in guppies. We also have rich know-how with the design of long-term observation hives for honey-bees, the construction of integrated hardware to probe animal systems and the recognition of behaviours from diverse datasets using machine learning. In the HIVEOPOLIS project, we will apply our diverse skillset to develop hardware and software to provide an integrated feedback loop between the honey bees, the dancing robot and the humans.
Team Members:
Tim Landgraf
Professor
Tim is a principal investigator.
Moritz Maxeiner
Moritz is a scientific assistant.
David Dormagen
David is a scientific assistant.
Contact person: Prof. Dr. Tim Landgraf, The Landgraf Lab, Freie Universität Berlin;
Arnimallee 7, Raum 111, 14195 Berlin; +49 30 838 75114.
E-mail: tim.landgraf@fu-berlin.de
Pollenity (BST) BGR
Pollenity is an AgriTech startup with the aim of digitizing the beekeeping and providing smart solutions to beekeepers around the world. The company has been established in 2015 and has been developing its products ever since. The sensor devices are designed for beekeepers by beekeepers, allowing for a seamless technology introduction, and also great usability. Today, Pollenity has customers on 5 continents and it’s proudly helping beekeepers and bee scientists with diverse operations and backgrounds to study and keep healthier and more productive bees. Throughout the HIVEOPOLIS project, our team will be responsible for various prototyping activities as well as design and development in the automated honey collection system and the beehive entrance device.
Team Members:
Sergey Petrov
Sergey is a principal investigator.
Stefan Donchev
Stefan is a Pollenity team member.
Erol Bairaktarov
Erol is a mechanical engineer.
Kostadin Angelov
Konstadin is a CTO Pollenity.
Contact person: Sergey Petrov, Founder and Executive director at Pollenity;
Bulgaria, Sofia, str. Dimitar Turkalanov 9, P.O. 1407. Phone: (+359) 887019646.
E-mail: sergey@pollenity.com
Latvia University of Life Sciences & Technologies (LLU) LVA
Scientific group from the Faculty of Information Technologies from Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies has more than 10 years scientific and industrial experience in the IT sector working on enterprise level solutions. Group has implemented different IT solutions in different scientific projects in various agricultural and multi-discipline fields. Group previously focused on design and implementation of automated systems for data processing and analysis. In this new project, HIVEOPOLIS, our main task is to provide information for futuristic bee colonies about the environmental conditions. As well communication mechanisms between colonies will be developed.
Team Members:
Aleksejs Zacepins
Aleksejs is a principal investigator.
Olvija Komasilova
Olvija is a researcher.
Vitalijs Komasilovs
Vitalijs is a senior researcher and
an associated professor.
Nikolajs Bumanis
Nikolajs is a researcher and a doctoral student.
Armands Kviesis
Armands is a senior researcher and
an assistant professor.
Contact person: Scientific project manager Assoc. Prof. Aleksejs Zacepins, Liela iela 2, Jelgava, Latvia, LV-3001, +371 26539560.
E-mail: alzpostbox@gmail.com
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (UBER) DEU
The Adaptive Systems Group is part of the Department of Computer Science at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The research focus of the group is on sensorimotor learning and prediction in the field of developmental and bio-robotics. The group has long-standing expertise in bio-inspired navigation systems for robotics, adaptive learning strategies, and experience with applications in precision and micro-farming. Within HIVEOPOLIS, we will work on environmental data collection and prediction, sensorimotor learning and active exploration strategies.
Team Members:
Verena Hafner
Professor
Verena is a principal investigator.
Heinrich Mellmann
Heinrich is a researcher.
Eugen Puzynin
Eugen is a scientific assistant.
Contact Person: Prof. Verena Hafner, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Computer Science;
Unter den Linden 6, D-10099, Berlin, Germany, +49 30 2093 3028.
E-mail: hafner@informatik.hu-berlin.de
