Trust and Conformity when Interacting with a Group of Robots

Although initial reports demonstrated the safety and feasibility of robotic adrenalectomy (RA), there are scant data on the use of this approach for pheochromocytoma. The aim of this study is to compare perioperative outcomes and efficacy of RA versus laparoscopic adrenalectomy (LA) for pheochromocytoma. Within 3 years, 25 patients underwent 26 RA procedures for pheochromocytoma. These patients were compared with 40 patients who underwent 42 LA procedures before the start of the robotic program. Data were retrospectively reviewed from a prospectively maintained, IRB-approved adrenal database. Demographic and clinical parameters at presentation were similar between the groups, except for a larger tumor size in the robotic group. In both groups, skin-to-skin operative time, estimated blood loss less, and intraoperative hemodynamic parameters were similar. The conversion to open rate was 3.9 % in the robotic and 7.5 % in the laparoscopic group (p = .532). There was no morbidity or mortality in the robotic group; morbidity was 10 % (p = .041) and mortality 2.5 % in the laparoscopic group. The pain score on postoperative day 1 was lower, and the length of hospital stay shorter in the robotic group (1.2 ± .1 vs. 1.7 ± .1 days, p = .036). To our knowledge, this is the first study comparing robotic versus laparoscopic resection of pheochromocytoma. Our results show that the robotic approach is similar to the laparoscopic regarding safety and efficacy. The lower morbidity, less immediate postoperative pain, and shorter hospital stay observed in the robotic approach warrant further investigation in future larger studies.

To date, only limited work has been performed on studying how performance scales with the addition of robots to groups. Our work focuses on studying this issue within one domain, robotic foraging. Foraging has been extensively studied, and is formally defined as consisting of locating target items from a search region S, and delivering them to a goal region G [3]. Previous work by Rybski et al. [5] demonstrated that groups of foraging robots do at times demonstrate marginal returns. As such, their productivity curves resembled logarithmic functions; the first several robots within their group added the most productivity per robot and each additional robot added successively less. In contrast, Fontan and Mataric’s [6] foraging robots contained a certain group size, a point they call ”critical mass”, after which the net productivity of the group dropped. Similarly, Vaughan et al. [7] wrote that the rule of ”too many cooks” applies to their groups and adding robots decreases performance after a certain group size. Economists have studied the gains in productivity within groups. According to their Law of Marginal Returns, if one factor of production is increased while the others remain constant, the overall returns will relatively decrease after a certain point. This model contains no reference to a concept similar to a ”critical mass” group size after which the added worker decreases the total productivity of the group. Our aim is to understand when the marginal returns predicted by the economic model would be consistently realized as work by [5] found they were, and when adding robots would decrease performance as [6] and [7] described.

Objectives:Partial nephrectomy is a standard intervention for the treatment of small renal tumors. Our study compares the outcomes of three different partial nephrectomy methods (open, laparoscopic and robotic assisted) in obese (≥30 Kg/m2) patients with renal tumors.Materials and Methods:Between 2005-2011, 66 obese patients had partial nephrectomy. Patients were divided into three groups according to intervention received: Open (n = 21), laparoscopic (n = 31) and robotic (n = 14). The outcome variables of blood loss, length of hospital stay, and complications were assessed.Results:Mean blood loss in the laparoscopic group (100 mls) was significantly less than open group (300 mls) and no difference between laparoscopic and robotic groups (150 mls). We observed a shorter median hospital stay in the laparoscopic group (two days) than open group (four days) and no difference between laparoscopic and robotic groups (three days). Three patients in the laparoscopic group had complications: Two grade II and one with grade III (based on Clavien-Dindo classification). Tumor location, pathology, grade, stage, patient gender, age, preoperative creatinine and postoperative creatinine were not different among the groups (P > 0.05). The mean tumor size in the laparoscopic group (2.70 cms) was significantly smaller than that of the open group (4.22 cm) (P < 0.05), but not statistically different from that of the robotic group (2.99 cm).Conclusions:Our study demonstrates that in obese patients, both laparoscopic and robotic partial nephrectomy are associated with less blood loss than open partial nephrectomy. Second, the length of the hospital stay was not related to the type of utilized intervention.

Cooperative object transport in distributed multi-robot systems requires the coordination and synchronisation of pushing/pulling forces by a group of autonomous robots in order to transport items that cannot be transported by a single agent. The results of this study show that fairly robust and scalable collective transport strategies can be generated by robots equipped with a relatively simple sensory apparatus (i.e. no force sensors and no devices for direct communication). In the experiments described in this paper, homogeneous groups of physical e-puck robots are required to coordinate and synchronise their actions in order to transport a heavy rectangular cuboid object as far as possible from its starting position to an arbitrary direction. The robots are controlled by dynamic neural networks synthesised using evolutionary computation techniques. The best evolved controller demonstrates an effective group transport strategy that is robust to variability in the physical characteristics of the object (i.e. object mass and size of the longest object’s side) and scalable to different group sizes. To run these experiments, we designed, built, and mounted on the robots a new sensor that returns the agents’ displacement on a 2D plane. The study shows that the feedback generated by the robots’ sensors relative to the object’s movement is sufficient to allow the robots to coordinate their efforts and to sustain the transports for an extended period of time. By extensively analysing successful behavioural strategies, we illustrate the nature of the operational mechanisms underpinning the coordination and synchronisation of actions during group transport.

This paper addresses the cooperative transport of a heavy object, called prey, towards a sporadically changing target location by a group of robots. The study is focused on the situation in which some robots are given the opportunity to localize the target, while the others (called the blind ones) are not. We propose the use of relatively simple robots capable of self-assembling into structures which pull or push the prey. To enable a blind robot to contribute to the group's performance, it can locally perceive traction forces, and whether it is moving or not. The robot group is controlled in a distributed manner, using a modular control architecture. A collection of simple hand-coded and artificially evolved control modules is presented and discussed. For group sizes ranging from 2 to 16 and different proportions of blind robots within the group, it is shown that controlled by an evolved solution, blind robots make an essential contribution to the group's performance. The study is carried out using a physics-based simulation of a real robotic system that is currently under construction.

This paper contributes to the study of interaction between groups of people and groups of robots by examining the effect of group size on people's attitudes and behaviors toward robots as interaction partners. Our work is motivated by psychological research on human intergroup dynamics, particularly the interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect, which suggest that interactions among groups are more competitive than interactions among individuals. To test the discontinuity effect in the context of human-robot interaction, we conducted a between-subjects experiment with four conditions, derived by differentiating the ratio of humans to robots in the interaction (one or two humans interacting with one or two robots). Participants played a game with robots in which they were given a chance to exhibit competitive and cooperative behaviors, which we tracked. We also measured changes in participants' attitudes toward robots following gameplay. Our results show that people playing in groups behave more competitively towards the robots than individual human players. However, participants' attitudes toward robots did not change after the short-term interaction.

1263 RENAL NEPHROMETRY SCORE AND SELECTION OF OPERATIVE MODALITY FOR PARTIAL NEPHRECTOMY

In this chapter we describe how the productivity of homogeneous robots scales with group size. Economists found that the addition of workers into a group results in their contributing progressively less productivity; a concept called the Law of Marginal Returns. We study groups that differ in their coordination algorithms, and note that they display increasing marginal returns only until a certain group size. After this point the groups’ productivity drops with the addition of robots. Interestingly, the group size where this phenomenon occurs varies between groups using differing coordination methods. We define a measure of interference that enables comparison, and find a high negative correlation between interference and productivity within these groups. Effective coordination algorithms maintain increasing productivity over larger groups by reducing the team’s interference levels. Using this result we are able to examine the productivity of robotic groups in several simulated domains in thousands of trials. We find that in theory groups should always add productivity during size scale-up, but spatial limitations within domains cause robots to fail to achieve this ideal. We believe that coordination methods can be developed that improve a group’s performance by minimizing interference. We present our findings of composite coordination methods that provide evidence of this claim.

Swarm robotics is a decentralised mechanism used to coordinate a large group of simple robots. An exploration task means fully scanning an unknown area using a large number of robotic swarms. It has great potential for use in many real-world applications, such as monitoring extreme environments. Although there are many research studies on swarm exploration, the real-world scenarios of the swarm algorithm have not been fully investigated. This paper proposes a new application scenario for swarm exploration to monitor nuclear waste storage facilities. To coordinate the robotic swarm, the active elastic sheet model was utilised, which is a bio-inspired collective motion mechanism. We implemented the exploration scenario in a wet storage facility using a swarm of low-cost autonomous micro-surface robots, Bubbles. We developed a realistic kinematic model of the Bubble platform and implemented the exploration scenario using large swarm sizes. This paper showed the feasibility of using a low-cost robotic platform for this new application, although the accuracy of the path planning was not very high.KeywordsSwarm roboticsExplorationCollective motionExtreme environments

As intended by its name, Physically Unclonable Functions PUFs are considered as an ultimate solution to deal with insecure storage, hardware counterfeiting, and many other security problems. However, many different successful attacks have already revealed vulnerabilities of certain digital intrinsic PUFs. Although settling-state-based PUFs, such as SRAM PUFs, can be physically cloned by semi-invasive and fully-invasive attacks, successful attacks on timing-based PUFs were so far limited to modeling attacks. Such modeling requires a large subset of challenge-response-pairs CRP to successfully model the targeted PUF. In order to provide a final security answer, this paper proves that all arbiter-based i.e. controlled and XOR-enhanced PUFs can be completely and linearly characterized by means of photonic emission analysis. Our experimental setup is capable of measuring every PUF-internal delay with a resolution of 6 picoseconds. Due to this resolution we indeed require only the theoretical minimum number of linear independent equations i.e. physical measurements to directly solve the underlying inhomogeneous linear system. Moreover, we neither require to know the actual PUF challenges nor the corresponding PUF responses for our physical delay extraction. On top of that devastating result, we are also able to further simplify our setup for easier physical measurement handling. We present our practical results for a real arbiter PUF implementation on a Complex Programmable Logic Device CPLD from Altera manufactured in a 180 nanometer process.

Large-scale phenotyping of animal behaviour traits is time consuming and has led to increased demand for technologies that can automate these procedures. Automated tracking of animals has been successful in controlled laboratory settings, but recording from animals in large groups in highly variable farm settings presents challenges. The aim of this review is to provide a systematic overview of the advances that have occurred in automated, high throughput image detection of farm animal behavioural traits with welfare and production implications. Peer-reviewed publications written in English were reviewed systematically following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. After identification, screening, and assessment for eligibility, 108 publications met these specifications and were included for qualitative synthesis. Data collected from the papers included camera specifications, housing conditions, group size, algorithm details, procedures, and results. Most studies utilized standard digital colour video cameras for data collection, with increasing use of 3D cameras in papers published after 2013. Papers including pigs (across production stages) were the most common (n = 63). The most common behaviours recorded included activity level, area occupancy, aggression, gait scores, resource use, and posture. Our review revealed many overlaps in methods applied to analysing behaviour, and most studies started from scratch instead of building upon previous work. Training and validation sample sizes were generally small (mean±s.d. groups = 3.8±5.8) and in data collection and testing took place in relatively controlled environments. To advance our ability to automatically phenotype behaviour, future research should build upon existing knowledge and validate technology under commercial settings and publications should explicitly describe recording conditions in detail to allow studies to be reproduced.

When confronted by predators, prey need to make an economic decision between continuing their current activity or flee. Flight Initiation Distance (FID), the distance at which an organism begins to flee an approaching threat, has been used to indicate an animal's fearfulness level and a way to examine factors influencing escape decisions. Here we investigated how the FID of the barber surgeonfish, Acanthurus bahianus, responds to the presence of spearfishers in a fishing site in northeast Brazil. Specifically, we examined whether the FID was influenced by body and group size; by the heterogeneity of species in groups formation; and the distance to shelter. Significant differences in FID were observed with increasing body size. We found no significant relationship of FID with size or group formation, neither with distance to shelter. Preferences in forming groups with A. bahianus were seen among some species, and a higher FID was associated with less sheltered substrates. Results obtained here support theories suggesting that spearfishers do influence fish behavior. We highlight that future research should focus on the indirect impacts of spearfishing on the structure of marine communities, emphasizing the anti-predator behaviour of juvenile and adult target fishes.

In the current era of rapid climate change, populations are facing environments in which food availability can quickly decline or become highly unpredictable. These conditions may require a high degree of flexibility of individuals and populations to adequately respond to such changes. We propose that the evolution of such high flexibility may be facilitated in social animals that form groups and cooperate in important tasks that critically affect survival and reproduction and ultimately affect adaptive capacity. We argue that sociality is likely to be a key, yet largely overlooked factor that shapes rather than limits the potential for phenotypic plasticity. Cooperatively breeding species are most suitable for studying the influence of both the physical and the social environmental conditions on shaping the phenotypic plasticity of individuals. Cooperative breeders display variation in group size and structure, and in the extent of cooperation and competition between their members. In addition, immigrants may impose costs and/or benefits on other group members, as well as on the whole group. In cooperative breeders, we elucidate why and how group formation and interactions between group members can provide adaptive benefits to some or all individuals in the group. Observed adjustments in social behaviour may be strategic and ultimately enhance individual fitness benefits, and thus improve group and population persistence. Future studies should examine how ecology and socialitytogethershape the adjustment of animals to rapid and extreme environmental change. In addition to identifying how changes in physical and social factors impact individual behaviour, group formation and sociality, it is crucial to assess associated costs and benefits by exploring the life histories of all group members. Understanding this requires population models, as they integrate all the critical life‐history phases, and different types of sociality. We are confident that future research into the ecology and social dynamics will reveal new avenues for the adaptive ability of cooperative breeders and other social species.

The goal of this article is to analyze the effect of group size on idea generation in both verbal and electronic brainstorming (EBS) groups. Group size effects were analyzed by a meta-analysis of 21 previously published articles. Section one reviews how group size impacts the communication process in group idea generation. Section two and three present the methods and results of our meta-analysis. Section four is a discussion of the results and implications for future research and practice.

Individuals that pay attention to narrative stimuli show synchronized heart rate (HR) and electrodermal activity (EDA) responses. The degree to which this physiological synchrony occurs is related to attentional engagement. Factors that can influence attention, such as instructions, salience of the narrative stimulus and characteristics of the individual, affect physiological synchrony. The demonstrability of synchrony depends on the amount of data used in the analysis. We investigated how demonstrability of physiological synchrony varies with varying group size and stimulus duration. Thirty participants watched six 10 min movie clips while their HR and EDA were monitored using wearable sensors (Movisens EdaMove 4 and Wahoo Tickr, respectively). We calculated inter-subject correlations as a measure of synchrony. Group size and stimulus duration were varied by using data from subsets of the participants and movie clips in the analysis. We found that for HR, higher synchrony correlated significantly with the number of answers correct for questions about the movie, confirming that physiological synchrony is associated with attention. For both HR and EDA, with increasing amounts of data used, the percentage of participants with significant synchrony increased. Importantly, we found that it did not matter how the amount of data was increased. Increasing the group size or increasing the stimulus duration led to the same results. Initial comparisons with results from other studies suggest that our results do not only apply to our specific set of stimuli and participants. All in all, the current work can act as a guideline for future research, indicating the amount of data minimally needed for robust analysis of synchrony based on inter-subject correlations.