Behavior Change of Crickets in a Robot-Mixed Society

Abstract

This paper presents a study on cricket behavior using an interdisciplinary robot/insect mixed society setup. Field crickets of the species Gryllus bimaculatus were allowed to interact with micro-robots equipped with decoys. This allows the stimulation of insect behaviors that are usually difficult to bring out evoke insects alone, allowing consistent behavioral research. We performed a set of experiments focused on the comparative study of the behavior of dominant and subordinate male crickets after a dominance dispute is settled. From these experiments we were able to collect evidence on the differences between subordinate and dominant behavior towards different decoys.