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，即使在短时间内，单独住房动物也会对行为，学习能力和生理学产生负面影响。通过改善行为和生理反应，群体啮齿动物可以更好地应对压力。不幸的是，许多实验，包括旨在衡量行为，昼夜节律和/或神经学研究的实验，都需要由于技术限制而导致的单个住房。单身动物很容易完成实验干预的自动输送，例如刺激，食物奖励或轻柔地抚摸睡眠，但在群体房屋环境中很复杂。该提案的总体目标是（1）开发一个新型的笼子外壳，旨在将多种物理上相似的动物组合为具有长期计算机辅助视频监控和射频识别（RFID），以正确，准确地识别和跟踪四个和四组的单个动物 （2）自动将干预刺激应用于该组中的一个或多个动物。该系统将采用位于笼子上方的机器人臂，当与视频跟踪模块和RFID读取器绑定时，它可以选择性地将干预刺激（即，柔和的裸露，食物，空气，泡芙）基于状态特定的反馈。可以使用视频跟踪，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的数据对定义状态进行分类。该系统将是可配置的，因此可以根据研究人员定义的生理参数将干预刺激应用于单个动物。在第一阶段，Pinnacle成功设计和测试了一个原型系统，该系统在四个队列中鉴定出一只动物，而睡眠则通过抚摸6小时而剥夺了该动物。成功测量了睡眠反弹以证明系统的可行性。第二阶段将通过测试和完善涉及多种动物的动物跟踪和行为，提高视频跟踪的准确性，并通过创建可以易于互换的多个ARM附件来继续进行这种发展。在第二阶段完成时，我们将拥有一个完整的交钥匙硬件和软件解决方案，该解决方案将为研究社区提供市售。