Motivation

Understanding how to efficiently herd and manage groups of agents is a fundamental challenge in fields ranging from agriculture to robotics and swarm control. While animal behaviour and robotics research often focus on developing optimal algorithms, humans have an intuitive ability to solve these complex coordination tasks. Harnessing this intuition can provide valuable insights into collective behaviour and control strategies.

This project proposes the creation of an online game in which players take on the role of a sheepdog tasked with herding sheep into a pen. By making the game widely accessible, we will gather data on the strategies players naturally adopt. Analysing these gameplay patterns will allow us to identify and model effective herding strategies, which can then inform research in robotics, AI, and even agricultural applications such as autonomous livestock management.

The challenge lies in designing a fun, engaging game that is also a useful research tool balancing playability with the accurate collection of player action data. The outcome will be both an interactive game available to the public and a valuable dataset of human herding behaviours.

Required Skills

• Programming skills such as Python, JavaScript (React, Phaser.js), C# (Unity)
• Interest in web or game development and user experience design
• Basic knowledge of data collection, logging and analysis
• Familiarity with AI, robotics or agent-based modelling would be advantageous
• Creativity in designing game mechanics

Skills to be Gained

Students will gain practical experience in game development and online deployment, with a focus on creating software that doubles as both entertainment and a research platform. You will learn how to design engaging game mechanics, how to collect and manage player data ethically, and how to analyse emergent strategies from gameplay. This project will provide transferable skills in programming, simulation, behavioural modelling and data analysis. It also offers exposure to interdisciplinary research at the intersection of computer science, robotics, AI and human computer interaction.

This project is suitable as a final year project for students at Lincoln studying Computer Science, Games or Robotics, or as an internship in robotics research. If you are interested, fill out our Expression of Interest Form, choosing Dr Jonathan Cox (jcox@lincoln.ac.uk) as the researcher to supervise the project.