Student’s projects at Mobots/Learnge

The winter period can be considered the most critical time of the year for a bee colony, where approximately 50% of colonies don’t survive. In the research project HIVEOPOLIS, we are developing a smart hive including detailed sensing that aims to better understand honeybees and support them. In recent winter seasons, a robotic device was used to collect data and interact with specific collective behaviours of groups of thousands of bees.

We aim to better understand how this robotic system can interact with an animal society, and predict how animals will behave under specific environmental conditions. Thus, we propose a project focused on the development of agent-based models that will take into account specific behaviors of winter bees (e.g., movement over thermal gradients, heat production, clustering/aggregation, etc.) and some physical properties of the hive (e.g., heat propagation through honeycombs). Examples of target predictions include temperature profiles, collective metabolism, collective location and consumption of the food supplies. The model should also cater for the sensing and control of the robotic system, thereby bringing together the physical and control elements of the artificial system with the natural system.

In order to extract behavioral parameters and compare simulation results and model accuracy, the student will have access to data collected from real hives from different instrument types (e.g., cameras and temperature sensors).

Notes:

• 1) This project description is designed as a PdM (30 ECTS); please contact us to discuss potential adaptation for PdS (10 ETCS). 
• 2) The sections above are not exhaustive but the project will develop computational models so build naturally on mathematical and/or computational competences.