A Smart Collar for Assessment of Activity Levels and Environmental Conditions for Guide Dogs.

This paper demonstrates the design and manufacturing of a smart and connected internet-of-things collar system for the collection of behavioral and environmental information from working canines. The environmental factors of ambient light, ambient temperature, ambient noise levels, barometric pressure and relative humidity are recorded by the smart collar system in addition to behavioral information about barking incidences and activity levels. The data are collected from the sensors and transmitted via Bluetooth to the handler's smartphone where the custom app also acquires GPS positioning using the on-board smartphone sensors. The stored data on the smartphone are uploaded to the IBM Cloud once the user is connected to a WiFi network. The low power design of the smart collar system permits it to be used continuously for 27 hours with a 290 mAh lithium polymer battery. The cost of the system is low enough to let the handlers have multiple collars and exchange it if needed or recharge it overnight when not in use. This system is currently being scaled up to be tested on hundreds of canine puppies by a preeminent guide dog school in the US. As a result, the design emphasis here has been on the cost and power reduction, comfortable ergonomics, user friendliness, and robustness of data streaming. We expect the system to provide continuous quantitative data for improving guide dog training programs in addition to contributing the well-being of other working dogs in the future.

A System for Assessment of Canine-Human Interaction during Animal-Assisted Therapies.

Animal-assisted therapies (AAT) are becoming increasingly common to help hospitalized patients, especially in oncology units. There is a critical need for methods and technologies that can enable a quantifiable understanding of AAT to objectively demonstrate its efficacy and improve its efficiency. In this paper, we present our preliminary efforts towards the development of wireless sensor systems to simultaneously detect the related behavioral (activity level, movement, stroking) and physiological signals (heart rate/variability) of humans and animals during their interaction. To detect heart rate, we tested two different techniques based on wearable or contactless electrocardiography. In this preliminary evaluation, we were able to assess these parameters successfully and identify the design challenges towards deployment of these systems in larger clinical studies.