Demo and Poster Session open to the public and Georgia Tech community

Come and see demonstrations of canines using touchscreens and wearable technology. There will also be video poster presentations of many projects using technology to both understand and enrich the lives of both wild and captive animals and pets.

The FIDO Sensors team (Melody Jackson, Thad Starner, Clint Zeagler, Scott Gilliland, Giancarlo Valentin, Larry Freil, Ceara Byrne) is creating wearable technology to allow working dogs to communicate. Assistance dogs can tell their owners with hearing impairments what sounds they have heard; guide dogs can tell their owners if there is something in their path that must be avoided.

About ACI

ACI is the main international conference on Animal-Computer Interaction, a rapidly growing field that focuses on the interaction between animals and computing-enabled technology.

Animals have been exposed to, and have interacted with, technology for the best part of a century; for example, in conservation studies, behavioral experiments, comparative cognition studies, precision farming, and various support roles. But how does technology affect animals in their individual and social lives? How does it enable or disable their natural or learned behaviors? How does it influence their experience? And how does it impact upon their welfare?

At the crossroad between interaction design, on the one hand, and animal behavioral and welfare science, on the other, researchers have begun to address these questions, with a focus on the usability and experience of technology from the perspective of animal users, and on the design processes that inform animal-computer interactions.

The emerging discipline of Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) focuses on:

• Studying and theorizing the interaction between animals and technology in naturalistic settings, with regards to specific animal activities or interspecies relations
• Developing user-centered technology that can: improve animals’ welfare by enabling the fulfillment of their needs; support animals in tasks humans might ask of them; foster interspecies relationships
• Informing interdisciplinary user-centered approaches that can enable animals to participate in the design process as legitimate stakeholders and contributors.