How can designers make switches, handles and levers that dogs can operate? How could an assistance dog raise the alarm if a diabetic patient has a hypoglycaemic attack? How could dogs in kennels control their own environment?
"If the dog could talk it would be easier," says Dr Clara Mancini at the Open University (OU), who designs technology that animals can use. With a background in humanities, design and technology, she founded the OU's Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) laboratory in 2011. "We need to involve users in the design process," she says. "They give the best input into how it works, but sometimes with animals this can be challenging." Mancini and her team work with dogs in their natural settings, often alongside their guardians, and the ACI laboratory has set strict standards to ensure animals' wellbeing during research. "It's like working with very young children – often you rely on their carers to interpret their responses."
Alarm trigger
One of Mancini's team is also developing an alarm which a diabetes alert dog can trigger if the owner collapses. "Dogs can't easily push buttons so we're looking at a mouth-operated mechanism which could trigger a chain of alarms," says Mancini.
Dogs that assist people with disabilities face their own challenges, she says; they can't always interpret a world designed for humans. Dogs can't see the colour red, for instance, and they distinguish objects by size rather than shape, which can make operating domestic appliances confusing.
"Dogs are at a disadvantage – switches and buttons aren't designed for canine users; dogs don't have a lot of precision in their paws," she says. Assistance dog owners might attach strings to doors that dogs can pull with their mouths – but this often means the door opens in the dog's face. To address this, Mancini and her team are designing technologies such as height-adjusted wall-mounted touch pads that a dog could operate with its nose to open and close a door, allowing the dog to stand aside. "We owe it to dogs working for humans to support them and make their life as comfortable as possible," she says. Another project aims to help medical detection dogs indicate whether a biological sample contains volatile cancer cells when they sniff it, possibly via a mouth-operated mechanism.
Mancini and her colleagues are also investigating how to make dogs' lives happier in kennels, and have completed a pilot project with the Dogs Trust, the UK's largest dog welfare charity. Housing large numbers of dogs is a challenge and, while the charity has state-of-the-art facilities, researchers believe smart technology could improve kennel life. Possible innovations include giving dogs control over the toys they receive and the sounds they hear to keep them stimulated. "Many animals, including dogs, do understand cause and effect," says Mancini.
During this research, it became obvious to Mancini and the team that technology could also be used to make the job easier for staff at the kennels by filtering and channelling information into different formats. Staff need to know a dog's dietary or medication needs – and this information could be displayed on a dedicated screen, while a separate display could filter relevant details for potential adopters – how much exercise a dog needs for example. Monitoring technology, such as pressure sensors under beds, could be used to assess a dog's wellbeing, by providing information that would enable carers to check at a glance on a dog's activity and sleeping patterns.
"To me the most important thing about working with a dog is to know whether it's happy. The key thing – and it's the same when designing for humans – is to understand how the user interacts naturally with the world so we can design technology that is consistent with that."
Mancini and the ACI team will be showing their research as part of Universities UK Week at the Natural History Museum (9-15 June) and the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition (30 June-6 July).
