Ever wanted to talk to the animals? A new wearable harness has brought man’s best friend even closer, letting dogs communicate with humans via digital technology.
The device, developed by Scientists at North Carolina State University,has been detailed in the paper Towards Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue.
The harness is packed with sensors, including posture readers, that will help humans understand what our canine friend is trying to say, and how they are feeling.
It also contains vibrating motors so owners can communicate with a dog even if it is out of sight.
The harness could help with training or refine how working dogs and their handlers cooperate.
The communication is two-way due to the feedback the dog wearer receives following audio commands from people. The harness also packs in a heart rate monitor and a temperature sensor.
The team have been working on emergency response research with the new tech and are now working on making the device smaller.
“We’ve developed a platform for computer-mediated communication between humans and dogs that opens the door to new avenues for interpreting dogs’ behavioural signals and sending them clear and unambiguous cues in return,” explained Dr. David Roberts, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State.
“We have a fully functional prototype, but we’ll be refining the design as we explore more and more applications for the platform.”
The wearable tech can be augmented with a variety of other devices, such as microphones, cameras and environmental sensors that can gather data, as from dogs being used in disaster zones.
“Dogs communicate primarily through body language, and one of our challenges was to develop sensors that tell us about their behaviour by observing their posture remotely,” said Dr. Alper Bozkurt, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State.
“So we can determine when they’re sitting, standing, running, etc., even when they’re out of sight – a harness-mounted computer the size of a deck of cards transmits those data wirelessly.”
The creators of the harness are now working on a miniaturised version and improving its sensors so they can be used in animal shelters and hospitals to monitor the wellbeing of animals in care or recovering from treatment.
Of course, we are still some way from getting actual texts from our canine friends, but that might be a good thing:
Source: Text From Dog
Read the paper here