Group housing: A robotic system to track and interact with individuals

集体住房：跟踪个人并与个人互动的机器人系统

• 批准号: 8780440
• 负责人: DAVID A JOHNSON
• 金额: $ 48.04万
• 依托单位: PINNACLE TECHNOLOGY, INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-04-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8780440
• 关键词: Air; Animal Housing; Animals; Anxiety; Area; Behavior; Behavioral; Biosensor; Circadian Rhythms; Clinical Data; Communities; Computer Assisted; Computer software; Data; Development; Devices; Disease; Drug Approval; Environment; Experimental Designs; Failure; Feedback; Food; Frequencies; Goals; Habitats; Hour; Housing; Individual; Intervention; Learning; Life; Marketing; Measurement; Measures; Mental Depression; Monitor; Motion; Movement; Neurologic; Pharmaceutical Preparations; Phase; Physiological; Physiology; Preclinical Drug Evaluation; Psychological reinforcement; Punishment; Radio; Rattus; Reader; Research; Research Personnel; Rewards; Robotics; Rodent; Running; Sales; Scanning; Shock; Sleep; Sleep Deprivation; Solutions; Stimulus; Stress; System; Technology; Testing; Therapeutic; Time; Wireless Technology; animal care; arm; base; behavior influence; biological adaptation to stress; cohort; coping; cost; design; experience; flexibility; improved; learning ability; meetings; neurochemistry; novel; pre-clinical; prototype; public health relevance; research study; response; social; software systems; sound; time use; tool

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Individually housing animals, even for a short period, is known to have a negative influence on behavior, learning ability, and physiology. Group-housed rodents are better able to cope with stress through improved behavioral and physiological responses. Unfortunately, many experiments, including those designed to measure behavior, circadian activity, and/or neurological studies, necessitate single- housing due to technological restrictions. Automated delivery of an experimental intervention, such as a stimulus, a food reward or gentle nudging to disturb sleep, is easily accomplished with single animals but is complicated in group-housed environments. The overall goal of this proposal is (1) to develop a novel cage enclosure designed to group house multiple, physically similar animals with long-term computer-aided video monitoring and radio frequency identification (RFID) to correctly and accurately identify and track individual animals within a group of four and (2) to automatically apply an intervention stimulus to one or more animals within the group. This system will employ a robotic arm situated directly above the cage, which, when tied to the video tracking module and RFID reader, can selectively apply an intervention stimulus (i.e., gentle nudging, food, air puff) to a specific animal based on state- specific feedback. The defined state may be classified using data collected via video tracking, wireless electroencephalograph (EEG) measurement, wireless biosensor measurement of specific neurochemicals, or other wireless physiological measurements. The system will be configurable so that the intervention stimulus may be applied to an individual animal based on physiological parameters defined by the researcher. In Phase I, Pinnacle successfully designed and tested a prototype system that identified one animal in a cohort of four and sleep deprived that animal by nudging for 6 hours. Sleep rebound was successfully measured to prove feasibility of the system. Phase II will continue this development by testing and refining animal tracking and behavior involving multiple animals, increasing the accuracy of video tracking, and increasing the types of intervention stimuli available to the researcher by creation of multiple arm attachments that can be easily interchanged. At the completion of Phase II, we will have a complete, turn-key hardware and software solution that will be commercially available to the research community.

描述（由申请人提供）：众所周知，单独饲养动物，即使是短期饲养，也会对行为、学习能力和生理产生负面影响。群养的啮齿动物能够通过改善行为和生理反应更好地应对压力。不幸的是，许多实验，包括那些旨在测量行为、昼夜节律活动和/或神经学研究的实验，由于技术限制而需要单一外壳。自动提供实验干预，例如刺激、食物奖励或轻柔地推动来扰乱睡眠，对于单个动物来说很容易完成，但在群体饲养的环境中却很复杂。该提案的总体目标是（1）开发一种新颖的笼舍，旨在将多个物理相似的动物分组饲养，并通过长期计算机辅助视频监控和射频识别（RFID）来正确、准确地识别和跟踪个体动物四人一组并且 (2)自动对组内的一只或多只动物施加干预刺激。该系统将采用位于笼子正上方的机械臂，当该机械臂与视频跟踪模块和 RFID 读取器相连时，可以根据状态有选择地对特定动物施加干预刺激（即轻柔的轻推、食物、吹气） - 具体反馈。可以使用通过视频跟踪、无线脑电图（EEG）测量、特定神经化学物质的无线生物传感器测量或其他无线生理测量收集的数据来对定义的状态进行分类。该系统将是可配置的，以便可以根据研究人员定义的生理参数将干预刺激应用于个体动物。在第一阶段，Pinnacle 成功设计并测试了一个原型系统，该系统在四只动物中识别出一只动物，并通过轻推 6 小时剥夺该动物的睡眠。成功测量了睡眠反弹，证明了该系统的可行性。第二阶段将继续这一开发，测试和完善涉及多个动物的动物跟踪和行为，提高视频跟踪的准确性，并通过创建可轻松互换的多个手臂附件来增加研究人员可用的干预刺激类型。第二阶段完成后，我们将拥有一个完整的交钥匙硬件和软件解决方案，可供研究界商业使用。