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Main Authors: Noronha, Ian, Jawaji, Advait Prasad, Soto, Juan Camilo, An, Jiajun, Gu, Yan, Kaur, Upinder
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08646
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author Noronha, Ian
Jawaji, Advait Prasad
Soto, Juan Camilo
An, Jiajun
Gu, Yan
Kaur, Upinder
author_facet Noronha, Ian
Jawaji, Advait Prasad
Soto, Juan Camilo
An, Jiajun
Gu, Yan
Kaur, Upinder
contents Animal-robot interaction (ARI) remains an unexplored challenge in robotics, as robots struggle to interpret the complex, multimodal communication cues of animals, such as body language, movement, and vocalizations. Unlike human-robot interaction, which benefits from established datasets and frameworks, animal-robot interaction lacks the foundational resources needed to facilitate meaningful bidirectional communication. To bridge this gap, we present the MBE-ARI (Multimodal Bidirectional Engagement in Animal-Robot Interaction), a novel multimodal dataset that captures detailed interactions between a legged robot and cows. The dataset includes synchronized RGB-D streams from multiple viewpoints, annotated with body pose and activity labels across interaction phases, offering an unprecedented level of detail for ARI research. Additionally, we introduce a full-body pose estimation model tailored for quadruped animals, capable of tracking 39 keypoints with a mean average precision (mAP) of 92.7%, outperforming existing benchmarks in animal pose estimation. The MBE-ARI dataset and our pose estimation framework lay a robust foundation for advancing research in animal-robot interaction, providing essential tools for developing perception, reasoning, and interaction frameworks needed for effective collaboration between robots and animals. The dataset and resources are publicly available at https://github.com/RISELabPurdue/MBE-ARI/, inviting further exploration and development in this critical area.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_08646
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MBE-ARI: A Multimodal Dataset Mapping Bi-directional Engagement in Animal-Robot Interaction
Noronha, Ian
Jawaji, Advait Prasad
Soto, Juan Camilo
An, Jiajun
Gu, Yan
Kaur, Upinder
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
Animal-robot interaction (ARI) remains an unexplored challenge in robotics, as robots struggle to interpret the complex, multimodal communication cues of animals, such as body language, movement, and vocalizations. Unlike human-robot interaction, which benefits from established datasets and frameworks, animal-robot interaction lacks the foundational resources needed to facilitate meaningful bidirectional communication. To bridge this gap, we present the MBE-ARI (Multimodal Bidirectional Engagement in Animal-Robot Interaction), a novel multimodal dataset that captures detailed interactions between a legged robot and cows. The dataset includes synchronized RGB-D streams from multiple viewpoints, annotated with body pose and activity labels across interaction phases, offering an unprecedented level of detail for ARI research. Additionally, we introduce a full-body pose estimation model tailored for quadruped animals, capable of tracking 39 keypoints with a mean average precision (mAP) of 92.7%, outperforming existing benchmarks in animal pose estimation. The MBE-ARI dataset and our pose estimation framework lay a robust foundation for advancing research in animal-robot interaction, providing essential tools for developing perception, reasoning, and interaction frameworks needed for effective collaboration between robots and animals. The dataset and resources are publicly available at https://github.com/RISELabPurdue/MBE-ARI/, inviting further exploration and development in this critical area.
title MBE-ARI: A Multimodal Dataset Mapping Bi-directional Engagement in Animal-Robot Interaction
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.08646