Evaluation of human-like anthropomorphism in the context of online bidding and affordances

This paper presents a four condition experiment and the results concerning the wider area of investigating the effectiveness and user satisfaction of using anthropomorphic feedback at the user interface. The specific context used was online bidding. The four conditions used in the experiment were human video, human voice, human voice with anthropomorphic text and a control consisting of neutral text. The main results of the experiment showed significant differences in participants' perceptions regarding the 'humanity' of the feedback they used. As expected, the control condition consisting of neutral text incurred significantly lower ratings for the 'humanity' characteristics of the feedback. The human video condition also incurred significantly stronger perceptions regarding the appearance being human. The results were also analysed in light of the theory of affordances and the authors conclude that the four conditions used in the experiment were likely equivalent in their facilitating the affordances. Therefore the authors suggest that facilitating the affordances may be more crucial to a user interface and the users than the actual anthropomorphic characteristic of the feedback used

Influence of rearing environment on development of perching and dustbathing behaviour in laying hens

Studies have shown that perching and dustbathing behaviour in birds can be affected by how and when the behaviour develops. With the increasing trend away from cages and towards keeping laying hens in larger, more complex housing systems, it is important to improve our knowledge about what chicks need to learn if they are going to be able to fully use perches and litter when these are provided to them as adults. In the first part of this thesis the early use of perches and how this was influenced by the bird´s behaviour during the first weeks of life was investigated at the individual level. Furthermore the relationship between a bird’s spatial ability as a chick and as an adult was investigated by testing birds in two different two-dimensional spatial tests and by observing their use of perches. The aim was to investigate the degree to which birds are hatched with spatial skills or acquire these by using perches. The second part of the thesis dealt with the importance of access to an appropriate, that is to say, functional substrate for the development of dustbathing behaviour. Here comparisons of dustbathing behaviour by birds with different experiences of peat, a preferred dustbathing substrate, were carried out. In addition it was investigated whether birds that had only ever known sham dustbathing would be as motivated to get access to peat for dustbathing as birds reared and used to performing functional dustbathing. It was found that behaviour, such as spending more time underneath the perches, related positively with early perch use and the ability to solve a two dimensional spatial test was related to use of perches in a novel situation as adult. However, the results did not shed any light on whether chicks hatched with good spatial ability or if the spatial ability mostly developed through the use of perches. Dustbathing behaviour was influenced mainly by the substrate and the birds which gained or lost access to peat changed their dustbathing behaviour according to if they dustbathed in peat or on paper. Birds dustbathing on paper performed a less coherent dustbathing behaviour with more long and short bouts than birds dustbathing on peat. Irrespective of treatment all birds were motivated to get access to peat for dustbathing. These results imply that sham dustbathing can not replace functional dustbathing for a hen. In combination, the results of this thesis confirm the importance of giving early access to litter and perches also to the young chick

A Robot Model of OC-Spectrum Disorders : Design Framework, Implementation and First Experiments

© 2019 Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyComputational psychiatry is increasingly establishing itself as valuable discipline for understanding human mental disorders. However, robot models and their potential for investigating embodied and contextual aspects of mental health have been, to date, largely unexplored. In this paper, we present an initial robot model of obsessive-compulsive (OC) spectrum disorders based on an embodied motivation-based control architecture for decision making in autonomous robots. The OC family of conditions is chiefly characterized by obsessions (recurrent, invasive thoughts) and/or compulsions (an urge to carry out certain repetitive or ritualized behaviors). The design of our robot model follows and illustrates a general design framework that we have proposed to ground research in robot models of mental disorders, and to link it with existing methodologies in psychiatry, and notably in the design of animal models. To test and validate our model, we present and discuss initial experiments, results and quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding the compulsive and obsessive elements of OC-spectrum disorders. While this initial stage of development only models basic elements of such disorders, our results already shed light on aspects of the underlying theoretical model that are not obvious simply from consideration of the model.Peer reviewe

The Ambient Horn: Designing a novel audio-based learning experience

The Ambient Horn is a novel handheld device designed to support children learning about habitat distributions and interdependencies in an outdoor woodland environment. The horn was designed to emit non-speech audio sounds representing ecological processes. Both symbolic and arbitrary mappings were used to represent the processes. The sounds are triggered in response to the children’s location in certain parts of the woodland. A main objective was to provoke children into interpreting and reflecting upon the significance of the sounds in the context in which they occur. Our study of the horn being used showed the sounds to be provocative, generating much discussion about what they signified in relation to what the children saw in the woodland. In addition, the children appropriated the horn in creative ways, trying to ‘scoop’ up new sounds as they walked in different parts of the woodland

Optimising cow traffic in automatic milking systems

This thesis comprises the results from three separate studies performed in the experimental automatic milking system at Kungsängen Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. In the first study, 30 high-yielding cows in early lactation were subjected to two different degrees of controlled cow traffic, and the effects on milk yield, dry matter intake, feeding patterns and voluntary visits to the milking unit and the control gates were measured. A model of mixed distributions for estimations of biologically relevant meal criteria from registrations in roughage stations was also evaluated. In the second study, the behaviour of 24 cows after they had been redirected in control gates was observed, and the cause of long redirection times from gates until they showed up in the milking unit was examined. In the third study, 9 cows were subjected to three different cow traffic systems in a carry-over design and the effects on cortisol concentrations in milk and ruminating patterns were studied. The studies showed that milking frequency and thereby milk production can be altered by different time settings in the control gates without limiting the daily feed intake of the cows. A high degree of guidance provokes social effects in the queue in front of the milking unit and in the feeding areas. It also makes it difficult for the cows to follow their natural feeding patterns. Judging from measurements of milk cortisol concentrations, controlled cow traffic was not stressful for the cows. Cows initiated meals with short intervals, which offered many opportunities to milk them. But the queue in front of the milking unit caused long redirection times, and the control gates failed to guide cows to high milking frequencies. Individual differences in feeding patterns and how cows respond to redirections in the control gates suggest that the control gates should be making decisions on an individual level

Towards a socially adaptive digital playground

We are working towards a socially adaptive digital playground for children. To this end, we are looking into nonverbal synchrony and other social signals as a measure of social behaviour and into ways to alter game dynamics to trigger and inhibit certain social behaviours. Our first results indicate that we can indeed influence social behaviours in a digital playground by changing game dynamics. Furthermore, our first results show that we will be able to sense some of these social behaviours using only computer vision techniques. I propose an iterative method for working towards a socially adaptive digital playground

Determining interaction rules in animal swarms

In this paper we introduce a method for determining local interaction rules in animal swarms. The method is based on the assumption that the behavior of individuals in a swarm can be treated as a set of mechanistic rules. The principal idea behind the technique is to vary parameters that define a set of hypothetical interactions to minimize the deviation between the forces estimated from observed animal trajectories and the forces resulting from the assumed rule set. We demonstrate the method by reconstructing the interaction rules from the trajectories produced by a computer simulation.Comment: v3: text revisions to make the article more comprehensibl