Scientists working on ‘animal internet’

A researcher at Glasgow University has already designed a phone for dogs and a play dating system for parrots

Scientists are using interactive digital devices to transform animal communication, working towards an “animal internet” with video calls for parrots and dogs.

Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, a lecturer and researcher at Glasgow University, runs the Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) group and has developed interfaces allowing long-distance calls for pets, as well as interactive enrichment systems for zoo animals like monkeys and giraffes.

Many animals we keep are often naturally highly social creatures, yet they are not kept in the kind of groups in captivity that they would naturally form in the wild or have the same level of social interaction, the scientist has said.

Hirskyj-Douglas started her research by building her dog Zach a phone to communicate with her while she was away. It allows the dog to shake a ball with an accelerometer, signaling for the system to video call her on a nearby screen. Either one of them can call the other and pick up or ignore the call.

Zach called her frequently, the video calls soon becoming routine, she said.

Since then, Hirskyj-Douglas and her team developed video calls for parrots to socialize. The birds were trained to use their tongues on tablet touchscreens, enabling them to connect with other parrots in a kind of play-dating system.

“We plan to move beyond simple video calling and really enable animals to do things interactively,” she said at the British Science Festival in Liverpool on Thursday, as cited by FT.

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“To build a workable ‘animal internet’, we must develop species-specific technologies to meet their needs, giving them tools that match their abilities,” Hirskyj-Douglas said in a comment published by Glasgow University earlier this month.

Baidu, China’s leading search engine operator, filed a patent in May for AI technology that translates animal sounds into human language. The system could allow “deeper emotional communication and understanding between animals and humans,” Baidu said in the patent document.