The Sounds of Robots in the Wild

The Sounds of Robots and Autonomous Agents in the Wild is part of my PhD work, which explores the behaviours of robotics and intelligent agents in complex ecosystems and seeks to integrate them into existing biological communities. Using the domain of sound and filtered through the lens of soundscape ecology, I have designed a robotic agent to listen to an ecosystem and produce sound as though it is a new species, inhabiting the physical and acoustic space.

Sounds are evolved using a simulated vocal tract that is controlled by a neural network, learning from the sounds that it produces. Below is an early offline version of the Rowdy Krause’s vocalizations.