Patients whose lungs are compromised due to various respiratory health concerns require mechanical ventilation for support in breathing. Different mechanical ventilation settings are selected depending on the patient’s lung condition, and the selection of these parameters depends on the observed patient response and experience of the clinicians involved. To support this decision-making process for clinicians, good prediction models are always beneficial in improving the setting accuracy, reducing treatment error, and quickly weaning patients off the ventilation support. In this study, we developed a machine learning model for estimation of the mechanical ventilation parameters for lung health. The model is based on inverse mapping of artificial neural networks with the Graded Particle Swarm Optimizer. In this new variant, we introduced grouping and hierarchy in the swarm in addition to the general rules of particle swarm optimization to further improve its prediction performance of the mechanical ventilation parameters. The machine learning model was trained and tested using clinical data from canine and feline patients at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. Our model successfully generated a range of parameter values for the mechanical ventilation applied on test data, with the average prediction values over multiple trials close to the target values. Overall, the developed machine learning model should be able to predict the mechanical ventilation settings for various respiratory conditions for patient’s survival once the relevant data are available.

Multirobot and multiagent systems demonstrate collective (swarm) intelligence through systematic and distributed integration of local behaviors in a group. Agents sharing knowledge about the mission and environment can enhance performance at individual and mission levels. However, this is difficult to achieve, partly due to the lack of a generic framework for transferring part of the known knowledge (behaviors) between agents. This article presents a new knowledge representation framework and a transfer strategy called KT-BT: knowledge transfer through behavior trees. The KT-BT framework follows a query-response-update mechanism through an online behavior tree framework, where agents broadcast queries for unknown conditions and respond with appropriate knowledge using a condition-action-control subflow. We embed a novel grammar structure called stringBT that encodes knowledge, enabling behavior sharing. We theoretically investigate the properties of the KT-BT framework in achieving homogeneity of high knowledge across the entire group compared to a heterogeneous system without the capability of sharing their knowledge. We extensively verify our framework in a simulated multirobot search and rescue problem. The results show successful knowledge transfers and improved group performance in various scenarios. We further study the effects of opportunities and communication range on group performance, knowledge spread, and functional heterogeneity in a group of agents, presenting interesting insights.

Many species in nature demonstrate symbiotic relationships leading to emergent behaviors through cooperation, which are sometimes beyond the scope of the partnerships within the same species. These symbiotic relationships are classified as mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism based on the benefit levels involved. While these partnerships are ubiquitous in nature, it is imperative to understand the benefits of collective behaviors in designing heterogeneous multi-robot systems (HMRS). In this paper, we investigate the impact of heterogeneity on the performance of HMRS applied to a search and rescue problem. The groups consisting of searchers and rescuers, varied in the individual robot behaviors with multiple degrees of functionality overlap and group compositions, demonstrating various levels of heterogeneity. We propose a new technique to measure heterogeneity in the agents through the use of Behavior Trees and use it to obtain heterogeneity informatics from our Monte Carlo simulations. The results show a positive correlation between the groups' heterogeneity measure and the rescue efficiency demonstrating benefits in most of the scenarios. However, we also see cases where heterogeneity may hamper the group's abilities pointing to the need for determining the optimal heterogeneity in group required to maximally benefit from HMRS in real-world applications.

Respiratory diseases such as asthma and acute respiratory distress syndrome as well as acute lung injury involve inflammation at the cellular level. The inflammation process is very complex and is characterized by the emergence of cytokines along with other changes in cellular processes. Due to the complexity of the various constituents that makes up the inflammation dynamics, it is necessary to develop models that can complement experiments to fully understand inflammatory diseases. In this study, we developed a discrete informatics model based on cellular automata (CA) approach to investigate the influence of elastic field (stretch/strain) on the dynamics of inflammation and account for probabilistic adaptation based on statistical interpretation of existing experimental data. Our simulation model investigated the effects of low, medium, and high strain conditions on inflammation dynamics. Results suggest that the model is able to indicate the threshold of innate healing of tissue as a response to strain experienced by the tissue. When strain is under the threshold, the tissue is still capable of adapting its structure to heal the damaged part. However, there exists a strain threshold where healing capability breaks down. The results obtained demonstrate that the developed discrete informatics based CA model is capable of modeling and giving insights into inflammation dynamics parameters under various mechanical strain/stretch environments.

Multiagent and multirobot systems (MRS) often rely on direct communication for information sharing. This work explores an alternative approach inspired by eavesdropping mechanisms in nature that involves casual observation of agent interactions to enhance decentralized knowledge dissemination. We achieve this through a novel indirect knowledge transfer through behavior trees (IKT-BT) framework tailored for a behavior-based MRS, encapsulating knowledge and control actions in behavior trees (BT). We present two new BT-based modalities—eavesdrop-update (EU) and eavesdrop-buffer-update (EBU)—incorporating unique eavesdropping strategies and efficient episodic memory management suited for resource-limited swarm robots. We theoretically analyze the IKT-BT framework for an MRS and validate the performance of the proposed modalities through extensive experiments simulating a search and rescue mission. Our results reveal improvements in both global mission performance outcomes and agent-level knowledge dissemination with a reduced need for direct communication.