Experiments in Animal-Interactive Robotics

The Robot Sheepdog Project was a rst investigation into the application of autonomous robots to control the behaviour of domestic animals. Three studentships were created to analyse and recreate the familiar sheepdog's task of gathering and fetching a ock to a specied goal position. The resulting theses present (1) a set of image processing techniques which can automatically generate models of ocking behaviour from video sequences [Sumpter, 1999]; (2) a study of the behavioural responses of the ducks when exposed to a robot-like vehicle [Henderson, 1999]; and (3) this thesis describes the development of an autonomous robot system that gathers a ock of ducks in a circular arena and manoeuvres them safely to a pre-determined goal position. This work establishes a methodology for developing animal-interactive robots. An important feature of this methodology is that it enables the development of a machine that can usefully interact with an animal without using the animal in the design..