Resumen de Quadrupeds Robots in Herding: Metrics for Experimental Validation of Animal-Robot Interactions

Beatriz Jové de Castro, Alexis Gutiérrez, Camino Fernández Llamas , Lidia Sánchez, Francisco Javier Rodríguez Lera , Vicente Matellán Olivera

• This paper discusses the evaluation of experiments involving animal-robot interactions. In particular, the paper focuses on the evaluation of interactions between quadruped robots and herds of sheep. This work has been conducted as part of a project aimed at developing a sheepdog robot, where the evaluation of its performance has to be assessed. However, the evaluation of the performance of a robotic sheepdog has been scarcely faced in the literature. There are competitions for biological sheepdogs, but most of these are evaluated by a subjective jury. The main contribution of this paper is the proposal of an objective methodology that could be used to evaluate both biological and robotic shepherd dogs, even automatically. The paper also discusses other lessons learned during the experiments performed involving robots and dogs.