[HN Gopher] Forming the Dog Internet: Prototyping a Dog-to-Human...
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Forming the Dog Internet: Prototyping a Dog-to-Human Video Call
Device (2021)
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-03-05 13:54 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dl.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dl.acm.org)
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be a better idea to try with birds first due to
| having a higher social intelligence than dogs?
| danovan wrote:
| I think there are far more dog pets than bird pets. From an
| impact-making perspective, dogs looks like a more attractive
| user base: - https://www.statista.com/statistics/414956/dog-
| population-eu.... -
| https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pvMc7w...
| Mondialisation wrote:
| Or pigs
| ykevinator2 wrote:
| Who is funding this?
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Who let the dogs chat?
|
| Who! Who! Who Who!
|
| (sorry)
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| An unbelievably long and winding paper for something that didn't
| even appear to work, and can be summarized by "we made a device
| that calls me when my dog plays with his toy". The call logs are
| full of the dog calling accidentally, calling while sleeping with
| his toy, or otherwise not even seeming to realize he was calling
| anyone.
|
| The paper reads like something one would write in high-school
| when you're given an assignment to write a 5 page paper. You fill
| it up with fluff until you hit 5 pages.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Dogs communicate mainly by smell and sound. I don't even think
| dogs see screens, at the way we do.
|
| If you somehow make the device smell like the human when the
| dog presses it then I guarantee you'll get a much stronger
| response. Maybe the dog would even figure out that when he gets
| lonely, he can press the button to get a "remote" presence and
| voice of his owner.
| yagyu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
| hulitu wrote:
| All we need now is a Pig-to-Human Video Call Device.
| kevinstubbs wrote:
| I wonder why they didn't try to use a "talk button"? Initiating
| the call by picking up a specific toy and shaking it seems.. I
| don't know, unnecessarily complicated. I don't know how true or
| unique it is for dogs to be able to learn to talk with buttons,
| but there are many YouTube videos showing how they are trained
| and how the dogs talk with them. Like this one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m-xupLJc4M or this one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3njWjIimd4
|
| So a few things would be interesting to see:
|
| 1.) Does the system work better if the dogs start & stop calls
| with buttons instead of shaking a ball?
|
| 2.) What if you added _other_ buttons for dogs to talk to other
| dogs? I think it might be boring for both human and dog because
| there is no physical aspect, but maybe dogs barking at each other
| would be interesting for them?
|
| 3.) When dogs learn the system, will we observe behaviors and
| customs change? Maybe they will call certain dogs more often, or
| create new rituals to start and stop calls. Maybe they will act
| like children (I mean this literally) where they just turn the
| video on, go about their day, and once in a while say something
| to each other.
| multjoy wrote:
| Dogs manipulate the world with their mouths. While they learn
| to do things with their paws, the most natural thing for them
| to do is to pick something up with their mouths. Shaking a toy
| is in-built behaviour.
| [deleted]
| hideo wrote:
| Buttons are a trained behavior. It takes training to get a dog
| to use those buttons and most credentialed trainers will
| heavily rely on rewards for training. The researchers here were
| trying to use an innate behavior. That makes sense because they
| want to check if the dog would use an innate behavior to
| initiate communication. If they rely on a trained behavior the
| dog may be doing it to get the reward that was used to train
| the dog and NOT doing it solely to initiate communication.
|
| A lot of those talking buttons videos you see in my opinion are
| either scripted/edited or a bit of projection/reinterpretation
| of what's going on in human terms. I have a dog I love to death
| and the lengths people including myself will go to reinterpret
| their behavior in human terms is incredible.
| ushakov wrote:
| dogs are already excellent communicators, they don't need
| buttons
|
| and most dog owners wouldn't have the time nor the discipline
| to train their dog to use these buttons
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I wonder, though, if dogs would be satisfied communicating to
| each other without being able to smell each other.
| kevinstubbs wrote:
| I think it's worth experimenting with - maybe next to the
| video camera there can be a "dog smell" emitter. Haha.
| kleiba wrote:
| Fascinating and desperately needed research. Digging a bit
| deeper, I also found an interesting interview with the authors of
| the paper. Here's a short excerpt:
|
| Q: What was it that made you first consider a career in science?
|
| A: I had always been interested in science, even as a young girl.
| But for a long time, I couldn't decide on the right topic. I was
| considering a variety of different alternatives, ranging from
| chemical glycobiology to string theory to finding a cure for
| cancer. Ultimately, though, I settled on human-dog interfaces.
|
| (You can watch the full interview here:
| https://fwesh.yonle.repl.co/)
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