When monkeys meet an ANYmal robot in the wild

International audience Robots have an increasingly important place in our society: we rely on computers andartificial intelligence algorithms to take decisions. No behavioral study to date has tested thesocial acceptance of a robot in a wild group of primates. To fill this gap, we investigated theinteractions between an animal robot, the quadruped ANYmal, and wild vervet monkeys.We introduced this robot to a group of 37 vervet monkeys within the Inkawu Vervet Projectin South Africa. The ANYmal robot is a remotely controlled sheep-sized quadruped robotwith an open box on its back filled with corn and apple pieces. We brought it to the fieldnine times over six days for about 10h. We introduced the robot following different steps: i)the robot was laying down on the ground ii) the robot was stably standing up quadruped; iii)the robot was slightly moving while standing up iv) the robot was slightly moving its bodyand its head while standing up. In steps i) and ii), the robot was also surrounded by food onthe ground. We filmed the sessions, and we are currently analyzing the videos to record thereaction of the monkeys to the robot, the identity of the monkeys and spatial proximitynetworks around the robot. The next step will be to test whether monkeys create bondswith the robot, trust knowledge and learn from the robot. This pilot study offers excitingperspectives on the phenomena of social acceptance of machines in mammal societies.