TY - GEN
T1 - Dogs can understand haptic communication
AU - Golan, Yoav
AU - Shapiro, Amir
AU - Serota, Ben
AU - Shriki, Oren
AU - Nisky, Ilana
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the Helmsley Charitable Trust through the Agricultural, Biological and Cognitive Robotics Center of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. A special thanks goes to our test subject, “Tai”, who brightens our lab and our lives. He is not a good dog, but rather the best dog.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.
PY - 2019/11/12
Y1 - 2019/11/12
N2 - Dogs are extremely common in the modern world, as pets or to help us as work animals. Despite their increasing popularity in both forms, our methods of communicating with them have not advanced much since their domestication. For even the most extensively trained working dogs, we rely on audial and visual cues to convey commands. In this work, we show that dogs can understand haptic cues. A vest embedded with vibration motors was designed to be worn by a dog. We trained a dog to associate four different types of vibrations with different commands, with good results. The dog successfully distinguished between vibrations, differing either in location or vibration type. Haptic communication can be used with working dogs or pets remotely, even in very noisy environments. It could also be used to communicate with deaf dogs, or facilitate communication between a pet and its speech-impaired owner.
AB - Dogs are extremely common in the modern world, as pets or to help us as work animals. Despite their increasing popularity in both forms, our methods of communicating with them have not advanced much since their domestication. For even the most extensively trained working dogs, we rely on audial and visual cues to convey commands. In this work, we show that dogs can understand haptic cues. A vest embedded with vibration motors was designed to be worn by a dog. We trained a dog to associate four different types of vibrations with different commands, with good results. The dog successfully distinguished between vibrations, differing either in location or vibration type. Haptic communication can be used with working dogs or pets remotely, even in very noisy environments. It could also be used to communicate with deaf dogs, or facilitate communication between a pet and its speech-impaired owner.
KW - Animal-computer interaction
KW - Haptic devices
KW - Haptic perception
KW - Human-animal interaction
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078444654&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3371049.3371066
DO - 10.1145/3371049.3371066
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85078444654
T3 - ACM International Conference Proceeding Series
BT - ACI 2019 - 6th International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 6th International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction: Common Denominator, ACI 2019
Y2 - 12 November 2019 through 14 November 2019
ER -