Many researchers working with animals want to better understand their subjects’ behavior. A human can’t exactly infiltrate the brains or the social groups of other species but animals, particularly social ones, can be influenced by their conspecifics. Advances in robotics are giving researchers a new way in. Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to build artificial versions of a variety of animals–from roaches and bees to fish and even rats–that can successfully trick the real ones. Building a convincing robotic mimic can let researchers set the pace and see how animal behavior changes with different, but controlled, social inputs. In turn, feedback from the animals can help shape improvement in the underlying algorithms needed to mimic complex behavior, creating an even better robotic iteration in the future. Read more in the August Technology Feature.
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