Research

Anticipation, prediction, and behavioral reliability in social interactions

Exploring prediction and anticipation in social interactions

Research Unit: 1

Project Number: 10

Example Behavior:
Social Intelligence

 

Principal Investigators:
Tim Landgraf
Verena Hafner
Jens Krause

Doctoral Researchers:
Lea Musiolek

Postdoctoral Researchers:
David Bierbach

 

Expected Project Duration
2019 - 2024

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Anticipation, prediction, and behavioral reliability in social interactions

Exploring prediction and anticipation in social interactions

©SCIoI

Agents with predictive skills can anticipate future events and thus have a major advantage over agents that cannot (Pezzulo et al., 2008; Winfield and Hafner, 2018). In a social setting, the ability to anticipate an interaction partner’s future actions will allow to adaptively modulate own behavioral strategies (Moussaid et al., 2011). In a cooperative context, anticipation may help to enhance communication among agents while in a competitive context it gives room for manipulative strategies. The proposed project will focus on the following four main objectives: In a first step, we will focus on developing analytical methods to identify heuristics of anticipation in live fish that interact with a biomimetic robotic fish (Robofish) and vary also in social responsiveness (objective a). In a second step, we will create situations in which live fish have to cooperate or compete with Robofish in order to achieve a goal effectively. This will allow us to estimate costs and benefits associated with anticipatory strategies (objective b). The aim of our experimental data is to identify cognitive heuristics that play a role in anticipation in interacting pairs that will then be used to develop a ubiquitous synthetic behavior of anticipation when social responsiveness in interaction partners varies (objective c). In order to evaluate this synthetic behavior, it will be implemented into Robofish as well as in humanoid robots and then tested in situations involving either robot-only pairs (robot-robot) or, in case of Robofish, also pairs with one live agent (fish-robot) (objective d).

Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., Krause, J., Landgraf, T., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Robofish as Social Partner for Live Guppies. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, 270–274. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64313-3_26
Musiolek, L., Bierbach, D., Weimar, N., Hamon, M., Krause, J., & Hafner, V. V. (2024). Evolving Artificial Neural Networks for Simulating Fish Social Interactions. EvoStar2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56852-7_10
Mellmann, H., Schlotter, B., Musiolek, L., & Hafner, V. V. (2020). Anticipation as a Mechanism for Complex Behavior in Artificial Agents. Artificial Life Conference Proceedings, 32, 157–159. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00314
Lukas, J., Kalinkat, G., Miesen, F. W., Landgraf, T., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2021). Consistent Behavioral Syndrome Across Seasons in an Invasive Freshwater Fish. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2020.583670
Landgraf, T., Moenck, H. J., Gebhardt, G. H. W., Weimar, N., Hocke, M., Maxeiner, M., Musiolek, L., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Socially competent robots: adaptation improves leadership performance in groups of live fish. arXiv:2009.06633 [cs]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2009.06633
Landgraf, T., Gebhardt, G. H. W., Bierbach, D., Romanczuk, P., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., & Krause, J. (2020). Animal-in-the-Loop: Using Interactive Robotic Conspecifics to Study Social Behavior in Animal Groups. Annual Review of Control, Robotics, and Autonomous Systems. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-control-061920-103228
Jolles, J. W., Weimar, N., Landgraf, T., Romanczuk, P., Krause, J., & Bierbach, D. (2020). Group-level patterns emerge from individual speed as revealed by an extremely social robotic fish. Biology Letters, 16(9), 20200436. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0436
Demandt, N., Bierbach, D., Kurvers, R. H. J. M., Krause, J., Kurtz, J., & Scharsack, J. P. (2021). Parasite infection impairs the shoaling behaviour of uninfected shoal members under predator attack. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-03080-7
Bierbach, D., Wenchel, R., Gehrig, S., Wersing, S., O’Connor, O. L., & Krause, J. (2021). Male Sexual Preference for Female Swimming Activity in the Guppy (Poecilia reticulata). Biology, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/biology10020147
Bierbach, D., Gómez-Nava, L., Francisco, F. A., Lukas, J., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., Landgraf, T., Romanczuk, P., & Krause, J. (2022). Live fish learn to anticipate the movement of a fish-like robot. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-3190/ac8e3e
Bierbach, D., Mönck, H. J., Lukas, J., Habedank, M., Romanczuk, P., Landgraf, T., & Krause, J. (2020). Guppies Prefer to Follow Large (Robot) Leaders Irrespective of Own Size. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2020.00441
Bierbach, D., Francisco, F., Lukas, J., Landgraf, T., Maxeiner, M., Romanczuk, P., Musiolek, L., Hafner, V. V., & Krause, J. (2021). Biomimetic robots promote the 3Rs Principle in animal testing. ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life. https://doi.org/10.1162/isal_a_00375

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