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

描述(由申请人提供)：单独饲养动物，即使是很短的一段时间，也会对行为、学习能力和生理产生负面影响。群养啮齿动物通过改善行为和生理反应，能够更好地应对压力。不幸的是，由于技术限制，许多实验，包括那些旨在测量行为、昼夜活动和/或神经学研究的实验，都需要单人住房。实验干预措施的自动传递，如刺激、食物奖励或轻轻轻推扰乱睡眠，在单个动物身上很容易完成，但在集体饲养的环境中则很复杂。这项提议的总体目标是(1)开发一种新型的笼子围栏，旨在通过长期的计算机辅助视频监控和射频识别(RFID)将多只身体相似的动物分组，以正确和准确地识别和跟踪四只和 (2)对组内的一个或多个动物自动施加干预刺激。该系统将采用位于笼子正上方的机械臂，当与视频跟踪模块和RFID读取器捆绑在一起时，可以根据特定状态的反馈有选择地对特定动物施加干预刺激(例如，轻轻轻推、食物、吹气)。可以使用经由视频跟踪、无线脑电图仪(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，以便干预刺激可以基于研究人员定义的生理参数应用于单个动物。在第一阶段，顶峰公司成功地设计并测试了一个原型系统，该系统可以识别四只动物中的一只，并通过轻推6小时来剥夺这只动物的睡眠。成功地测量了睡眠反弹，证明了该系统的可行性。第二阶段将继续这一发展，测试和改进涉及多只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。在第二阶段完成后，我们将拥有一个完整的、交钥匙的硬件和软件解决方案，并将在商业上向研究界提供。

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.