Experimental Study on Automatic Learning Speed Acceleration for a Rat using a Robot

we would like to clarify the basic factors necessary for a symbiosis between creatures and robots through the interaction experiments between rats and robots. In our previous studies, we developed a robot involving two levers and conditioned the rat to push these levers to obtain food by experimenter’s teaching. In this paper, we try to condition the rats to push the levers on the robot to obtain food by the robot autonomously showing its functions without experimenter’s teaching. On animal psychology, “shaping” is used to condition animals to perform difficult or complex behavior that would rarely occur spontaneously. By importing the concept of “shaping,” we developed an operational pattern generation algorithm for the robot that enabled it to autonomously operate to show the rats its function. We then conducted an interaction experiment for evaluating this algorithm and confirmed the effectiveness of it. Thus, we proposed to import the concept of “shaping” into robot’s behavior generation to enable it to autonomously show creatures its functions.