ASSISI: Charged Hot Bees Shakin' in the Spotlight

In this article we describe the concept of generating a mixed society of honeybees and artificial (robotic) agents in the project ASSISI|
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. We discuss the motivation of generating a mixed society as novel bio-hybrid system that can achieve self-awareness, self-regulation and environmental awareness through self-organization and collective information processing. In our approach the artificial agents communicate with the natural agents through 4 physical channels, which are emphasized in this article: temperature, vibration, electromagnetic fields, and light. We also discuss our methodology of automated model-generation and model-adaptation through evolutionary robotics principles.