Boids (bird-oids) is a widely used model to mimic the behaviour of birds. Shoids (sheep-oids) rely on the same boids rules with the addition of a repulsive force away from a sheepdog (a herding agent). Previous work assumed homogeneous shoids. Real-world observations of sheep show non-homogeneous responses to the presence of a herding agent. We present a portfolio of information-theoretic and spatial indicators to track the footprints of shoids with different parameters within the shoid flock. The portfolio is named the Centre of Influence to indicate that the aim is to identify the influential shoids with the highest impact on flock dynamics. We use both synthetic simulation-driven data and measurements collected from live sheep herding trials by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to validate the proposed measures. The resultant measures will allow us in our future research to design more efficient control strategies for the UAV, by polarising the attention of the machine learning algorithm on those shoids with influence footprints, to drive the flock to improve the herding of sheep.
Effective Human-Swarm Teaming (HST) relies on bi-directional information flow between the human and the swarm. Systems with human control or oversight rely on information flow from the swarm to the humans to inform decisions, while information that flows back from humans is only that necessary for actuation, which remains primarily physical. To unlock the full potential of HSTs, the augmentation must extend into the overall logic of teaming, including both the human’s and machine’s cognitive domains, whereby an AI-equipped robot teammate is capable of complex cognitive functions. The effectiveness of HST will need a sufficient level of transparency in the interaction space formed by the bi-directional information flow between the human and the swarm. This transparency must continuously and constructively interpret the information exchanged between the human and the swarm to afford both cognitive agents with the capacity to form shared understanding and situation awareness, and thus, facilitating effective teaming through trust. An ontology is one formal representational construct that enables bi-directional interpretation, thus, transparency. In this paper, we conceptualise and present a meta-ontology for transparent HST interactions.
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