Design of Collision Avoidance System for a Chicken Robot Based on Fuzzy Relation Equations

Design and study of mixed animal-robot societies are the fields of scientific exploration that can bring new opportunities for research into the group behavior of social animals. Our goal is to develop a Chicken Robot – an autonomous mobile robot, socially acceptable by a group of chicks and able to interact with them using appropriate communication channels. One of the basic requirements to such a robot is the safety of its motion with respect to the chicks, so it has to be endowed with an efficient real-time collision avoidance system. In this paper we present a fuzzy obstacle avoidance system that was designed for the Chicken Robot using the theory of fuzzy relation equations. This approach allows to easily check a consistency of a used rule base and provides a more systematic approach to design of fuzzy control systems comparing with the classical techniques. The experimental results demonstrate that a mobile robot equipped with the presented system is able to successfully avoid obstacles and safely navigate on an experimental arena

Audio-visual detection of multiple chirping robots

Design, study, and control of mixed animals-robots societies are the fields of scientific exploration that can bring new opportunities for study and control of groups of social insects and animals and, in particular, for improvement of welfare and breeding conditions of domestic animals. Our long-term objective is to develop a mobile robot, socially acceptable by chickens and able to interact with them using appropriate communication channels. For interaction purposes the robot has to know positions of all birds in an experimental area and detect those uttering calls. In this paper, we present an audio-visual approach to locate the robots and animals on a scene and detect their calling activity. The visual tracking is provided by a marker-based tracker with help of an overhead camera. Sound localization is achieved by the beamforming approach using an array of sixteen microphones. Visual and sound information are probabilistically mixed to detect the calling activity. The experimental results demonstrate that our system is capable to detect the sound emission activity of multiple moving robots with 90% probability

Development of a mobile robot to study the collective behavior of zebrafish

A robot accepted by animals as conspecifics is a very powerful tool in behavioral biology, particularly in studies of gregarious animals. In this paper we present a robotic zebrafish designed for experiments on the collective animal behavior. The robot consists of two modules: a replica fish fixed on the magnetic base and a miniature mobile robot guiding the replica fish from below the experimental tank. The size of the mobile robot is 45x15x73 mm that makes it possible to use it in a group of robots forming a dense artificial fish school. The experiments showed that the robot can reach speed and acceleration maximums reported for zebrafish, thus its parameters satisfy the conditions necessary for the next step that will be interaction tests with the zebrafish

Animal-Robot Interaction for Ethological Studies:an Advanced Framework Based on Socially Integrated Mobile Robots

A robot properly introduced into an animal group, accepted by the animals, and capable of interacting with them is a very powerful tool for advanced ethological research, particularly in gregarious animals. Moreover, such robots can find an application in the management of farm animals and wildlife. This field of scientific research, often referred to as animal-robot interaction, has received attention only recently. Very few projects are completed or currently running and there is a lack of general methods and techniques. This is in part due to the challenges in managing such projects that need the latest expertise from multiple disciplines, notably biology and engineering. This thesis presents tools to run, monitor, and analyze experiments with mixed groups of animals and robots. As a model animal, we selected the domestic chicken, first because it is a well-studied animal, providing a solid biological knowledge base, and second because it is one of the most important farm animals. Our framework includes the following components: mobile robots, monitoring tools to observe and record experiments, tools to extract behavioral parameters from the recorded experimental data and tools to analyze and visualize results. The mobile robot we designed for experiments with the domestic chickens, the PoulBot, is a modification of the marXbot, a research robot developed in our laboratory at EPFL. We extended the standard marXbot configuration (providing, among other hardware, a locomotion base, an omnidirectional camera, a speaker, and an i.MX31 processor) with a color LEDs pattern module and a protective bumper. An array of 16 microphones with an acquisition board and a pecking device were also developed as extension modules. As a result, the PoulBot robot is able to use visual and acoustic communication channels – the two most important for birds. To make chickens accept the robot we used the filial imprinting mechanism. The monitoring tools play an essential role in ethological research that is often overlooked when planning experiments. For visual monitoring and recording, we used the open source tracking software SwisTrack whose component-based structure allowed us to implement the components necessary for chicken-robot experimentation. To detect the calling activity of chicks, we used a beamforming technique probabilistically coupled with the visual tracker. The robot design and tools were validated in several series of experiments. These experiments were mainly meant to demonstrate that the robot can be socially integrated into animal groups as a surrogate hen and to study how the overall group attraction to the robot is affected by the strength of individual attraction and how in turn that affects it. Six PoulBot robots were used in three principal series of experiments, each series lasting for one month. To extract trajectories of individual chicks from the recorded video data, we used a variational Bayesian Gaussian mixture model classification with a particle filters-based prediction of future positions of chicks. We also developed a set of MATLAB scripts to estimate and visualize relevant behavioral metrics (animal speed, robot-animal distances, etc.) that are further used to analyze and model animal behavior. We made a classifier to identify automatically if and how strongly a chick is imprinted on the robot. We believe that the presented framework extends the current state of the art in the field of animal-robot interaction. In the short term, the results obtained in our studies could become a foundation for designing novel intelligent robotic systems based on natural behaviors for high-throughput ethological laboratory studies and, in the long term, used in farming to improve the breeding conditions of poultry

Real-Time Audio-Visual Calls Detection System for a Chicken Robot

Design, study, and control of mixed animals-robots societies is the field of scientific exploration that can bring new opportunities for study and control of groups of social animals. In the Chicken Robot project we develop a mobile robot, socially acceptable by chicks and able to interact with them using appropriate communication channels. For interaction purposes the robot has to know positions of all birds in an experimental area and detect those uttering calls. In this paper, we present an audio-visual approach to locate the chicks on a scene and detect their calling activity in the real-time. The visual tracking is provided by a marker-based tracker with a help of an overhead camera. Sound localization is achieved by the beamforming approach using an array of sixteen microphones. Visual and sound information are probabilistically mixed to detect the calling activity. The experiments using the e-puck robots instead of the real chicks demonstrate that our system is capable to detect the sound emission activity with more than 90% probability

Autonomous construction with a mobile robot in a resource-limited environment: a demonstration of the integration of perception, planning and action

This demo presents a miniature mobile robot performing autonomous construction in an environment where resources are limited. After an exploration phase, the robot builds a structure at a designated location according to an order from a human. Since local resources are scarce, the robot must change its environment to get access to enough resources to complete the construction. This process involves perceiving the environment, reasoning on possible courses of action using a task planner, and implementing these actions to successfully build the requested structure

Designing a socially integrated mobile robot for ethological research

A robot introduced into an animal group, accepted by the animals as conspecifics, and capable of interacting with them is an efficient tool for ethological research, particularly in studies of collective and social behaviour. In this paper, we present the implementation of an autonomous mobile robot developed by the authors to study group behaviour of chicks of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). We discuss the design of the robot and of the experimental framework that we built to run animal–robot experiments. The robot design was experimentally validated, we demonstrated that the robot can be socially integrated into animal groups. The designed system extends the current state of the art in the field of animal–robot interaction in general and the birds study in particular by combining such advantages as (1) the robot being a part of the group, (2) the possibility of mixed multi-robot, multi-animal groups, and (3) close-loop control of robots. It opens new opportunities in the study of behaviour in domestic fowl by using mobile robots; being socially integrated into the animal group, robots can profit from the positive feedback mechanism that plays key roles in animal collective behaviour. They have potential applications in various domains, from pure scientific research to applied areas such as control and ensuring welfare of poultry.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Infection control in wound care: A study of fatalism in community nursing

This paper presents the ”Mixed Societies of Robots and Vertebrates” project that is carried out by the Mobile Robotics group at EPFL, Switzerland in collaboration with the Unit of Social Ecology at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. The idea of the project is to study behavior in young chicks of the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) by using mobile robots able to interact with animals and accepted as members of an animal group. In contrast to other studies where relatively simple robotic devices are used to test specific biological hypotheses, we aim to design a multipurpose robot that will allow ethologists to study more sophisticated phenomena by providing a wide range of sensors and sufficient computational power. In this paper we present a PoulBot robot and give an example of the ethological experiment, where it is used to study the social aggregation in chick groups

Building a safe robot for behavioral biology experiments

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Design of a modular robotic system that mimics small fish locomotion and body movements for ethological studies

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe