As part of the ToBIT event series at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), four students working with Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel are addressing four topics within his research area: “The Decoding of Symbolic Languages of Animals”, “The Decoding of Animal Body Language”, “The Decoding of Animal Facial Expressions and Behavior”, and “The Decoding of Extraterrestrial Languages”. The first three topics are also being explored – or have already been explored – in dedicated projects. DEEP VOICE focuses on whale communication. The Animal Whisperer Project comprised three apps that analyzed and evaluated the body language of cows, horses, and dogs, while VISUAL provided blind and visually impaired individuals with audio descriptions of images from wildlife webcams. In ANIFACE, a system was designed to identify individual bears in the Alps using facial recognition. Projects involving the reception of extraterrestrial signals and communication with alien life forms were discussed in the book “300 Keywords Weltraum“. The students presented their interim results on November 26, 2025. The final ToBIT event will take place in January 2026.
Communicating with Fellow Beings and Extraterrestrials
