Seven Years after the Manifesto: Literature Review and Research Directions for Technologies in Animal Computer Interaction

As technologies diversify and become embedded in everyday lives, the technologies we expose to animals, and the new technologies being developed for animals within the field of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) are increasing. As we approach seven years since the ACI manifesto, which grounded the field within Human Computer Interaction and Computer Science, this thematic literature review looks at the technologies developed for (non-human) animals. Technologies that are analysed include tangible and physical, haptic and wearable, olfactory, screen technology and tracking systems. The conversation explores what exactly ACI is whilst questioning what it means to be animal by considering the impact and loop between machine and animal interactivity. The findings of this review are expected to form the first grounding foundation of ACI technologies informing future research in animal computing as well as suggesting future areas for exploration.

[1]  Márta Gácsi,et al.  Social behaviours in dog-owner interactions can serve as a model for designing social robots , 2014 .

[2]  Janet C. Read,et al.  Where HCI meets ACI , 2016, NordiCHI.

[3]  Roshan Lalintha Peiris,et al.  Computer Game for Small Pets and Humans , 2007, ICEC.

[4]  Wim van Eck,et al.  Animal Controlled Computer Games: Playing Pac-Man Against Real Crickets , 2006, ICEC.

[5]  Luca Sardi,et al.  Enrichments For Pigs: Improving Animal-Environment Relations , 2017, ACI.

[6]  Thad Starner,et al.  FIDO - facilitating interactions for dogs with occupations , 2013 .

[7]  Amy L. Miller,et al.  The Assessment of Post-Vasectomy Pain in Mice Using Behaviour and the Mouse Grimace Scale , 2012, PloS one.

[8]  Giancarlo Valentin Gestural activity recognition for canine-human communication , 2014, ISWC '14 Adjunct.

[9]  Is My Dog Watching TV ? , 2014 .

[10]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Designing an emergency communication system for human and assistance dog partnerships , 2015, UbiComp.

[11]  Andrew Stuart,et al.  Exploring interspecies sensemaking: dog tracking semiotics and multispecies ethnography , 2012, UbiComp.

[12]  Ann Morrison,et al.  The impact of training approaches on experimental setup and design of wearable vibrotactiles for hunting dogs , 2016, ACI.

[13]  Anna Zamansky,et al.  The Player is Chewing the Tablet!: Towards a Systematic Analysis of User Behavior in Animal-Computer Interaction , 2015, CHI PLAY.

[14]  Diana Reiss,et al.  Spontaneous vocal mimicry and production by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): evidence for vocal learning. , 1993 .

[15]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Animal-computer interaction (ACI): changing perspective on HCI, participation and sustainability , 2013, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[16]  Blaine A. Price,et al.  The Role of Ethological Observation for Measuring Animal Reactions to Biotelemetry Devices , 2017, ACI.

[17]  Karin Lindström,et al.  When Species Meet , 2016 .

[18]  Javier Jaén Martínez,et al.  Towards Future Interactive Intelligent Systems for Animals: Study and Recognition of Embodied Interactions , 2017, IUI.

[19]  John A. Hamilton,et al.  An embedded system for real-time navigation and remote command of a trained canine , 2010, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[20]  Xavier Masip-Bruin,et al.  Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare , 2016, ACM Comput. Surv..

[21]  Richard Buchanan,et al.  Design Research and the New Learning , 2001, Design Issues.

[22]  Janet C. Read,et al.  Using Behavioural Information to Help Owners Gather Requirements from their Dogs' Responses to Media Technology , 2016, BCS HCI.

[23]  Robert S. Allison,et al.  Challenges Related to Nonhuman Animal-Computer Interaction: Usability and 'Liking' , 2014, ACE '14 Workshops.

[24]  Marcus Carter,et al.  Supporting animal welfare with automatic tracking of giraffes with thermal cameras , 2017, OZCHI.

[25]  Gerd Kortuem,et al.  UbiComp for animal welfare: envisioning smart environments for kenneled dogs , 2014, UbiComp.

[26]  David M Levinson,et al.  Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering , 2009, Complex.

[27]  Daniel Mills,et al.  Left gaze bias in humans, rhesus monkeys and domestic dogs , 2009, Animal Cognition.

[28]  H. Kobayashi,et al.  No . 118 Carrier Pigeon-like Sensing System : Beyond Human-Red Forest Interactions , 2013 .

[29]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Animal-computer interaction (ACI): pushing boundaries beyond 'human' , 2014, NordiCHI.

[30]  B. McCowan,et al.  Spontaneous vocal mimicry and production by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus): evidence for vocal learning. , 1993, Journal of comparative psychology.

[31]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Communication technology for human-dog interaction: exploration of dog owners' experiences and expectations , 2011, CHI.

[32]  Ludwig Huber,et al.  Utilising dog-computer interactions to provide mental stimulation in dogs especially during ageing , 2017, ACI.

[33]  Thad Starner,et al.  Going to the dogs: towards an interactive touchscreen interface for working dogs , 2014, UIST.

[34]  Ben Kirman,et al.  Power, participation, and the dog internet , 2016, Interactions.

[35]  Stefano Gualeni,et al.  Felino : The Philosophical Practice of Making an Interspecies Videogame , 2014 .

[36]  Javier Jaén Martínez,et al.  Assessing machine learning classifiers for the detection of animals' behavior using depth-based tracking , 2017, Expert Syst. Appl..

[37]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Towards an animal-centred ethics for Animal-Computer Interaction , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[38]  Heini Törnqvist,et al.  Dogs do look at images: eye tracking in canine cognition research , 2012, Animal Cognition.

[39]  Cassim Ladha,et al.  Dog's life: wearable activity recognition for dogs , 2013, UbiComp.

[40]  Thad Starner,et al.  FIDO—Facilitating interactions for dogs with occupations: wearable communication interfaces for working dogs , 2014, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[41]  Thomas D. Albright,et al.  How Do Monkeys Look at Faces? , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[42]  Hugh Dubberly,et al.  ON MODELINGWhat is interaction?: are there different types? , 2009, INTR.

[43]  Alexandre Pongrácz Rossi,et al.  A dog using skype , 2016, ACI.

[44]  Wim van Eck,et al.  Player Expectations of Animal Incorporated Computer Games , 2017, INTETAIN.

[45]  Ádám Miklósi,et al.  What Are You or Who Are You? The Emergence of Social Interaction between Dog and an Unidentified Moving Object (UMO) , 2013, PloS one.

[46]  Yasuhiko Naito,et al.  A new technique for monitoring the detailed behaviour of terrestrial animals: A case study with the domestic cat , 2005 .

[47]  Blaine A. Price,et al.  Designing for wearability in animal biotelemetry , 2016, ACI.

[48]  Steve North Salient features, combined detectors and image flipping: an approach to Haar cascades for recognising horses and other complex, deformable objects , 2017, ACI.

[49]  Hugh Dubberly,et al.  What is interaction ? Are there different types ? , 2014 .

[50]  Colin Potts,et al.  Design of Everyday Things , 1988 .

[51]  Thad Starner,et al.  Predicting the Suitability of Service Animals Using Instrumented Dog Toys , 2018, Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol..

[52]  Admela Jukan,et al.  Beyond Production Indicators: A Novel Smart Farming Application and System for Animal Welfare , 2017, ACI.

[53]  Daniel Mills,et al.  Discrimination of human and dog faces and inversion responses in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) , 2010, Animal Cognition.

[54]  Fiona J. Williams,et al.  Development of a head-mounted, eye-tracking system for dogs , 2011, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[55]  Blaine A. Price,et al.  Towards a Wearer-Centred Framework for Animal Biotelemetry , 2016 .

[56]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Understanding people and animals: the use of a positioning system in ordinary human-canine interaction , 2011, CHI.

[57]  Heli Väätäjä,et al.  Animal Welfare as a Design Goal in Technology Mediated Human-Animal Interaction , 2014, ACE '14 Workshops.

[58]  Javier Jaén Martínez,et al.  Sound to your objects: a novel design approach to evaluate orangutans' interest in sound-based stimuli , 2016, ACI.

[59]  J. Read,et al.  The Ethics of How to Work with Dogs in Animal Computer Interaction , 2017 .

[60]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Semi-supervised classification of static canine postures using the Microsoft Kinect , 2016, ACI.

[61]  Thad Starner,et al.  A method to evaluate haptic interfaces for working dogs , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[62]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Animal-computer interaction: a manifesto , 2011, INTR.

[63]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Balancing noise sensitivity, response latency, and posture accuracy for a computer-assisted canine posture training system , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[64]  Marcus Carter,et al.  Naturalism and ACI: augmenting zoo enclosures with digital technology , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[65]  Ayanna M. Howard,et al.  Towards a canine-human communication system based on head gestures , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[66]  Tommy Strandvall,et al.  Eye Tracking in Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Research , 2009, INTERACT.

[67]  Bonnie M. Perdue,et al.  Technology at the zoo: the influence of a touchscreen computer on orangutans and zoo visitors. , 2012, Zoo biology.

[68]  Heli Väätäjä,et al.  Ethical issues and guidelines when conducting HCI studies with animals , 2013, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[69]  A. Dixon Ethological strategies for defence in animals and humans: their role in some psychiatric disorders. , 1998, The British journal of medical psychology.

[70]  M. Mendl,et al.  Assessing the ‘whole animal’: a free choice profiling approach , 2001, Animal Behaviour.

[71]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Theorizing animal-computer interaction as machinations , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[72]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Knowledge engineering for unsupervised canine posture detection from IMU data , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[73]  Patricia Pons,et al.  Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals , 2015 .

[74]  Bernd Brügge,et al.  iPig: Towards Tracking the Behavior of Free-roaming Pigs , 2017, ACI.

[75]  Jun Rekimoto,et al.  Cat@Log: sensing device attachable to pet cats for supporting human-pet interaction , 2009, Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology.

[76]  Alper Bozkurt,et al.  Towards the non-visual monitoring of canine physiology in real-time by blind handlers , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[77]  Janet C. Read,et al.  Who Is Really In The Center Of Dog Computer Design? , 2014, ACE '14 Workshops.

[78]  Steve North,et al.  HABIT: Horse Automated Behaviour Identification Tool - a position paper , 2015 .

[79]  H. Wirman Games for/with strangers - captive orangutan (Pongo Pygmaeus) touch screen play , 2014 .

[80]  Thad Starner,et al.  Search and rescue: dog and handler collaboration through wearable and mobile interfaces , 2016, ACI.

[81]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Canine-centered interface design: supporting the work of diabetes alert dogs , 2014, CHI.

[82]  Martin Kaltenbrunner,et al.  Sonic Experiments with Grey Parrots: A Report on Testing the Auditory Skills and Musical Preferences of Grey Parrots in Captivity , 2017, ACI.

[83]  Janet C. Read,et al.  DoggyVision: Examining how dogs (Canis familiaris) interact with media using a dog-driven proximity tracker device. , 2018, Animal Behavior and Cognition.

[84]  Anupam Alur,et al.  Haptic Technology :-A Comprehensive Review of its Applications and Future Prospects , 2014 .

[85]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Creating an Evaluation System for Future Guide Dogs: A Case Study of Designing for Both Human and Canine Needs , 2017, ACI.

[86]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Sensing the shape of canine responses to cancer , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[87]  Marcus Carter,et al.  Kinecting with Orangutans: Zoo Visitors' Empathetic Responses to Animals' Use of Interactive Technology , 2017, CHI.

[88]  Linden J. Ball,et al.  Eye tracking in HCI and usability research. , 2006 .

[89]  Maarten H. Lamers,et al.  Interactive Digital Gameplay Can Lower Stress Hormone Levels in Home Alone Dogs - A Case for Animal Welfare Informatics , 2015, ICEC.

[90]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Towards multispecies interaction environments: extending accessibility to canine users , 2016, ACI.

[91]  Helen Sharp,et al.  Exploring methods for interaction design with animals: a case-study with Valli , 2016, ACI.

[92]  D. Goode Playing with my dog Katie : an ethnomethodological study of dog-human interaction , 2007 .

[93]  Oskar Juhlin,et al.  Animal-computer interaction SIG , 2012, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[94]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Toward Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue , 2014, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[95]  David L. Roberts,et al.  Behavior recognition based on machine learning algorithms for a wireless canine machine interface , 2012, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Body Sensor Networks.

[96]  Ádám Miklósi,et al.  Dogs and their human companions: The effect of familiarity on dog–human interactions , 2015, Behavioural Processes.

[97]  Ayanna M. Howard,et al.  Creating collar-sensed motion gestures for dog-human communication in service applications , 2016, SEMWEB.

[98]  Gary M. Weiss,et al.  WagTag: a dog collar accessory for monitoring canine activity levels , 2013, UbiComp.

[99]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Re-Centering Multispecies Practices: A Canine Interface for Cancer Detection Dogs , 2015, CHI.

[100]  Thad Starner,et al.  Canine computer interaction: towards designing a touchscreen interface for working dogs , 2016, ACI.

[101]  James Everett Young,et al.  A Dog Tail for Utility Robots: Exploring Affective Properties of Tail Movement , 2013, INTERACT.

[102]  Javier Jaén Martínez,et al.  Developing a depth-based tracking system for interactive playful environments with animals , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[103]  Joseph J. LaViola,et al.  Early explorations of CAT: canine amusement and training , 2010, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[104]  Ádám Miklósi,et al.  Social Interaction with an “Unidentified Moving Object” Elicits A-Not-B Error in Domestic Dogs , 2015, PloS one.

[105]  Hill Hiroki Kobayashi,et al.  Playful rocksalt system: animal-computer interaction design in wild environments , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[106]  Benjamin Ishak Resner,et al.  Rover@Home : computer mediated remote interaction between humans and dogs , 2001 .

[107]  Dirk van der Linden,et al.  K9-Blyzer: Towards Video-Based Automatic Analysis of Canine Behavior , 2017, ACI.

[108]  Clara Mancini,et al.  Empowering assistance dogs: an alarm interface for canine use , 2014 .

[109]  Helen Sharp,et al.  High tech cognitive and acoustic enrichment for captive elephants , 2018, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[110]  Anna Zamansky,et al.  Toward characterization of playful ACI , 2016, Interactions.

[111]  Stefano Gualeni,et al.  Becoming with: towards the inclusion of animals as participants in design processes , 2016, ACI.

[112]  Helen Sharp,et al.  Designing Interactive Toys for Elephants , 2015, CHI PLAY.

[113]  Duane M. Rumbaugh,et al.  Language Learning by a Chimpanzee: The Lana Project , 1977 .

[114]  Bernd Brügge,et al.  Gait Anomaly Detection in Dairy Cattle , 2017, ACI.

[115]  Daniel Berckmans,et al.  Automatic estimation of number of piglets in a pen during farrowing, using image analysis , 2016 .

[116]  Adrian David Cheok,et al.  A mobile pet wearable computer and mixed reality system for human–poultry interaction through the internet , 2006, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing.

[117]  Alexander Ferworn,et al.  Canine Pose Estimation: A Computing for Public Safety Solution , 2009, 2009 Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision.

[118]  Janet C. Read,et al.  A dog centred approach to the analysis of dogs' interactions with media on TV screens , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[119]  Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen,et al.  Designing for intuitive use for non-human users , 2015, Advances in Computer Entertainment.

[120]  Marcus Carter,et al.  Interactive technology and human-animal encounters at the zoo , 2017, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[121]  Haibo Li,et al.  Using Vibrotactile Language for Multimodal Human Animals Communication and Interaction , 2014, ACE '14 Workshops.