DogPhone Lets Pets Ring Their Owners (theguardian.com) 53
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: [R]esearchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone. The device -- nicknamed the DogPhone -- is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone. The owner can choose whether to take the call, and when to hang up, while they can also place a call to their pet -- although the dog has to move the ball to pick up.
The research, which is published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Computer-Human interaction and is being presented at the 2021 ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference in Lodz, Poland, reveals how [Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, of the University of Glasgow, and first author of the research] and researchers from Aalto University in Finland settled on a soft ball to create the device. The DogPhone underwent a number of iterations to ensure it had the right level of sensitivity towards movement -- these were tested over 16 days by Hirskyj-Douglas and her nine-year-old black labrador, Zack.
A diary detailing the calls between owner and pet suggests the latter did not always seem to know what he was doing -- despite having been shown five times how the system worked. "Dog rang me but was not interested in our call instead was checking for things in his bed," Hirskyj-Douglas noted during the testing of one iteration. Another entry reveals the potential pitfalls of the DogPhone. "Dog walking around wagging and then laying down. I was in a meeting so had to hang up quickly," one record reveals. The team say that many of the calls made by Zack -- who was left alone for about eight hours during testing days -- appear to have been accidents although they caution that may simply be the human perspective. "For example, when the dog triggered the system with their butt, this could have been deliberate and the dog's unique way of triggering an interaction," they write.
The research, which is published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Computer-Human interaction and is being presented at the 2021 ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference in Lodz, Poland, reveals how [Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, of the University of Glasgow, and first author of the research] and researchers from Aalto University in Finland settled on a soft ball to create the device. The DogPhone underwent a number of iterations to ensure it had the right level of sensitivity towards movement -- these were tested over 16 days by Hirskyj-Douglas and her nine-year-old black labrador, Zack.
A diary detailing the calls between owner and pet suggests the latter did not always seem to know what he was doing -- despite having been shown five times how the system worked. "Dog rang me but was not interested in our call instead was checking for things in his bed," Hirskyj-Douglas noted during the testing of one iteration. Another entry reveals the potential pitfalls of the DogPhone. "Dog walking around wagging and then laying down. I was in a meeting so had to hang up quickly," one record reveals. The team say that many of the calls made by Zack -- who was left alone for about eight hours during testing days -- appear to have been accidents although they caution that may simply be the human perspective. "For example, when the dog triggered the system with their butt, this could have been deliberate and the dog's unique way of triggering an interaction," they write.
Ig Nobel prize nominee (Score:1)
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They can however recognize voices very well.
Still seems pretty stupid -
Give the dog a ball that calls their human when they play with it.
Pretend the fact that they play with it means they intended to call their human
.
.
Profit
Get the Amazon button (Score:4, Funny)
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And what if you call your doggo to check if you need to make another steak?
Hello. Yes, this is dog [kym-cdn.com]
needs more research (Score:3)
Re: 10 yrs away from dog/human translators. (Score:4, Funny)
Fido: "Food! I want food food food!"
Owner: "No, you'll get fat."
Fido: "Why should I care?"
Owner: "Being fat will get you sick; you know you hate the vet."
Fido: "I'm a dog, I can't comprehend that far ahead, I just want food food food!"
Owner: "Dammit, STOP asking for food!"
Fido: "Okay, can you scratch my balls?"...
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Owner: "Dammit, STOP asking for food!"
Fido: "Okay, can you scratch my balls?"...
Owner: "Your what?"
Fido: "Damn you! Damn you to hell!!!"
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How Planet of the Dogs ends.
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> STILL HUNGRY
You've had breakfast
> WANT MORE BREAKFAST
You'll get fat.
> WHAT'S FAT?
It's what happens when you eat too much food.
> FAT SOUNDS AWESOME.
> LET'S GET FAT [tumblr.com].
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The trick isn't to translate dog, it's to teach them how to speak human [youtube.com]...
Test with birds instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically African Grey Parrots. I had an African Grey for 25 years that used to ring like my cordless phone when I first got her to get me to run into the room. She would also call our dog by name, and when the dog came into the room tell her "good girl".
The bird would also call my wife and I by name and ask for specific things like; shower, food, outside, and would tell us when she wanted to go to bed.
We just adopted another Grey a few months ago. He was already 20 years old and when he wants the dog, says "come here girl".
I'm pretty sure if there was a means for the bird to pick up a video call, they would do it if they knew their favorite people were on the other side.
Re:Test with birds instead (Score:4, Interesting)
You might find this intreating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not sure how accurate that article is, it claims the parrot used more than 100 words. I have heard stories that he used close to 1000 and was teaching other parrots to speaking.
The interesting part is not the amount of words, but his cognitive abilities: he could identify 50 different objects and recognize quantities up to six; that he could distinguish seven colors and five shapes, and understand the concepts of "bigger", "smaller", "same", and "different", and that he was learning "over" and "under".[2] Alex passed increasingly difficult tests measuring whether humans have achieved Piaget's Substage 6 object permanence. Alex showed surprise and anger when confronted with a nonexistent object or one different from what he had been led to believe was hidden during the tests.[14]
He actually invented his own words, for things that where to complicated for him to pronounce, so strawberry became "red banana" or something like that ...
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I hope it is accurate and not a bunch of bullshit like with that gorilla.
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Keep that bigmouth parrot out of the restroom.
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Parrot when guests are over: "Not tonight, I have a headache; not tonight, I have a headache..."
dogs not interested (Score:2)
My kids are constantly trying to talk to the dog over facetime, or get grandma to talk to the dog over facetime. He doesn't get it and doesn't give a crap. The dog might hear you or see you, but its not you, the touch and warmth are missing. Your dog is no dummy.
Re: dogs not interested (Score:2)
Dogs cant detect refresh rates over 90hz, anything under that looks like a bad lsd trip. This is destined to fail from the start
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How exactly do you reckon anything under 90hz looks like a bad LSD trip? We've kinda lived with that for a lot of years on TV without thinking we were tripping.
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Vision is far more important to humans than it is to dogs. Humans are very visually oriented; we have one of the most advanced and capable senses of vision known. Our sense of vision is as far superior to dogs' as dogs' sense of smell is to ours.
Imagine making a machine that could reproduce the smell of an individual person into a room. That would be very interesting to dogs, but humans would likely not respond to it at all.
Re: dogs not interested (Score:2)
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Birds may have 4 color vision, and far higher acuity, but on the other hand... our eyes aren't fixed in our heads, and our heads don't have to behave like gyroscopically stabilized platforms to keep them stable enough for use.
The acuity of health young humans' vision (circa 20/10 or not far off), and the corresponding packing density of cones in the fovea, approach the theoretical limit of optical perfo
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Birds may have 4 color vision, and far higher acuity, but on the other hand... our eyes aren't fixed in our heads, and our heads don't have to behave like gyroscopically stabilized platforms to keep them stable enough for use.
Some birds can move their eyes. Many have lost the ability, trading larger (and so more acute) eyeballs and weight (eye musculature is not free) against needing to move their head. But that isn't really a vision tradeoff: it's part of why some birds have such incredibly sharp vision es
Re: dogs not interested (Score:2)
Humans probably have the best vision for tool use and reading. Our brain's vision system is the best at detecting human faces.
But we're not good at spotting mice from the air, better than a dog but not the best.
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I didn't say "best"; I said "advanced". Except for raptors birds do *not* have functionally higher visual acuity than humans, although they may have higher density of visual cells *on average* over the whole retina.
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Also it makes no sense for animals to have as good vision as humans. The real trick is the huge brain, that is able to make sense of all that information. Without that brain, animal vision that challenges human vision is just tunnel vision
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Predatory bird eyes are optimised for extreme resolution, so they can spot prey at great distance - but it comes at a cost. Their night vision is terrible - can't see anything in low light. Except owls. They went the other way: Optimised low-light vision, but at the cost of lower acuity.
Primates, including humans, are notable for their good vision among mammals - especially color vision. The vast majority of mammal species have dichromatic vision, with correspondingly limited ability to distinguish colors.
Re: dogs not interested (Score:2)
You're completely ignoring how much more advanced the human visual cortex is.
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Imagine making a machine that could reproduce the smell of an individual person into a room.
John Waters was ahead of his time [wikipedia.org].
Re:dogs not interested (Score:4, Funny)
Re: need smell-o-vision...to attract dogs (Score:1)
That would ruin reality TV. You don't want to smell Snooky's snooky.
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ball != owner (Score:2)
The pet doesn't make an association between the ball and the owner (who would?). Without that association, it would be difficult to progress in the experiment.
The obvious solution is for the owner to piss on the ball each morning before work. The dog's natural instink is to associate that smell with the owner and to expect phone calls soon.
Re: ball != owner (Score:2)
No need to be so gross as pissing on it. Humans have scent glands (essentially) in their armpits and groin that can be used. I suspect your dog will be much more familiar with scents from those places than the scent of your piss. Just rub it on your armpits every morning and that'll be good enough.
Just great (Score:2)
Next thing, dogs will want expensive iDogPhones (or iBalls) from Apple -- and iCloths to clean them.
I don't think dogs like this much, either.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon was trying to do a lot of this stuff with the Echo Dots ... You can set up custom actions so when it detects your dog barking, it lets you "drop in" and talk to your dog through it, trigger it to play soothing music, and so on.
I've heard people say their dog grew to HATE the Echo Dot and started trying to attack/bite/eat it because, "Stupid puck keeps pretending to be my owner but my human isn't really here at all!"
Now study the dog anxiety levels (Score:3)
Are these people trying to inflict the COVID-19 "always connected - work from home" type anxiety on their dogs? Domestic dogs sleep most of their life. They are happy to do so. Why bother them just to satisfy some emotional need of the owner?
Show it to a cat. Or a parrot (Score:2)
So if you want a pet really calling an owner because they want to, chose a pet which may do that and has the intelligence to match - African Grey, Macao, Cockatoo or one of the "human oriented" cat breeds - Bengal, Russian Blue/White/Black (all thr
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Cockatoos: Birds with enough intellectual ability to be a proper asshole, on par with humans.
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My cat would screen his calls.
If you need this... (Score:4, Insightful)
...you shouldn't have gotten a dog.
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Yep! It's pretty easy to learn what your dog is "saying" to you, if you just pay attention. They really aren't that hard to read!
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I think you missed my point... if you need to leave your dog alone at home during the day, you are not in a position to own a dog.
If it stops bored lonely dogs barking (Score:3)
There's nothing worse than a neighbour who claims their dog never barks, while the dog drives the entire neighbourhood nuts. Of course he doesn't bark when you're home, he barks when he misses you.
Someone's got their eye on the prize (Score:2)
Specifically, the Ig Nobels.
The Dog Now Owns the Ex-Owner (Score:1)
When the dog triggered the system with their butt. (Score:1)
BananaPhone (Score:2)