Give a dog a phone, and wait for their call
A system, dubbed DogPhone, is the first of its kind to empower animals to use the internet to contact their owners and could help address the separation anxiety of pets who have grown used to having people at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
DogPhone is the result of a collaboration between Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas from the School of Computing Science and her ten-year-old Labrador Zack, along with colleagues from Aalto University in Finland.
DogPhone allows Zack to call Dr Hirskyj-Douglas by picking up and shaking a ball fitted with an accelerometer. When the accelerometer senses movement, it initiates a video call on a laptop in their living room allowing Zack to see and interact with his owner whenever he chooses. Zack’s owner can also use the system to call him, and he is free to answer or ignore the call.
Dr Hirskyj-Douglas is a specialist in animal-computer interaction at the University’s School of Computing Science, who researches new ways to enrich pets’ lives through technology. “There are hundreds of internet-connected ‘smart toys’ on the market that dog owners can buy for their pets, from fitness monitors to remotely controlled treat dispensers. However, the vast majority of them are built with the needs of dog owners in mind, allowing them to observe or interact with their pets while away from home. Very few of them seem to consider what dogs themselves might want, or how technology might benefit them as living beings with thoughts and feelings of their own.
“What I wanted to do with DogPhone was find a way to turn Zack from a 'usee' of technology, where he has no choice or control over how he interacts with devices, into a ‘user’, where he could make active decisions about when, where, and how he placed a call.”
DogPhone could empower ‘pandemic pups’ to stay in touch with their owners
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