(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-11)
Valentin, Giancarlo; Alcaidinho, Joelle; Howard, Ayanna M.; Jackson, Melody Moore; Starner, Thad
We explored symbolic canine-human communication for working
dogs through the use of canine head gestures. We identified
a set of seven criteria for selecting head gestures and identified
the first four deserving further experimentation. We devised
computationally inexpensive mechanisms to prototype the live
system from a motion sensor on the dog’s collar. Each detected
gesture is paired with a predetermined message that is voiced
to the humans by a smart phone. We examined the system
and proposed gestures in two experiments, one indoors and
one outdoors. Experiment A examined both gesture detection
accuracy and a dog’s ability to perform the gestures using a
predetermined routine of cues. Experiment B examined the
accuracy of this system on two outdoor working-dog scenarios.
The detection mechanism we presented is sufficient to
point to improvements into system design and provide valuable
insights into which gestures fulfill the seven minimum
criteria.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-09)
Valentin, Giancarlo; Alcaidinho, Joelle; Friel, Larry; Zeagler, Clint; Jackson, Melody Moore; Starner, Thad
We designed an experiment with the goal of assessing wearable reachability for canines. We investigated the effect of placement on the ability of dogs to reach on-body interfaces with their snouts. In our pilot study, seven placements along the front legs, rib cage, hip and chest are tested with six dogs. The results showed that the front leg placements are reachable with the least amount of training and are also the most invariant to small changes in location. With training, the lower half of the rib cage area had the fastest access times across subjects. We hope that these results may be useful in mapping the constraint space of placements for snout interactions.