Activity Trackers for Raising Guide Dogs: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Guide puppy raisers play a crucial role in the process of training assistance dogs supporting mobility of the visually impaired. Recent technological developments bring about a plethora of IT-based solutions, such as canine activity trackers and mobile apps, that could provide novel benefits in supporting the puppy raisers in their important contribution to society. We present an exploratory empirical study of the perceptions and attitudes of puppy raisers and their guide dog center towards such technological solutions focusing in particular on their perceptions towards privacy. Guide dogs have been shown to provide assistance with mobility and independence for the visually impaired, while offering the additional benefit of companionship 1, 2 and are increasingly used worldwide. Preparing a guide dog is a complex process which requires considerable resources and intensive training 3, 4. A key role in the training process is played by volunteer puppy raisers, who serve as custodians for the animals for about 12 months. They are responsible for basic obedience training, exposure to various stimuli and socialization of the puppy during the first critical year of its life. During this period, they are typically supervised and guided by trainers of the Guide Dog Centers. They usually also form local puppy raising social groups, wherein they share ideas and information, work on training techniques, and participate in socialization outings. After 12-15 months the puppies return to the Centers for formal guide dog training of several months, after which they are placed with a vision-impaired person, to commence their working life. Despite their crucial contribution to the process of guide dog training, puppy raisers have mainly been included in research studies only as sources of information 5, 6, 4. Only one study addressed

Interspecies information systems

“…Going beyond the interaction perspective, little research has considered the use of commercially available technology for working animals and companion animals to understand the importance of the data such technology capture and process. For instance, by showing differences in volunteer and organizational apprehension to using activity trackers for blind guide dog raising based on a fear of data protection compliance [120], to showing privacy concerns for pet location data is related to the kind of pet and strength of the bond between owner and pet [105], to how technology-supported dog parks could encourage community connections and animal behavioral awareness [52] While the research discussed above indeed investigates the actual technology used on the market, it still lacks critical analysis and evaluation of how such technology is situated in a wider socio-technical context, which is a crucial for engineering an information system [4,10,96,117]. As a result, it is currently difficult to assess how such technology actually informs understanding of animal behavior and in turn steers human action.…”

Pets without PETs: on pet owners’ under-estimation of privacy concerns in pet wearables

“…Moreover, technical investigations into dataleaks among pet wearables have been reported focusing on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) weaknesses, demonstrating the viability of Man-in-the-Middle attacks and data interception [67]. In a study of service dog training, Zamansky and van der Linden [76] found that guide puppy dog raisers were divided on the question of whether dog activity data from such trackers constitutes personal data capable of identifying them (hint: it does), finding an even 3-way split between those who thought it did, those who thought it didn't, and those who had no idea. Perhaps more importantly, the study found that while raisers of puppies were fine with sharing such potentially personal data with the guide center for which they raised these puppies, the management of the center was far less willing to officially use such wearables for the privacy implications they would hold in terms of capturing indirect information of the puppy raisers.…”

Analysis of Dogs’ Sleep Patterns Using Convolutional Neural Networks

“…While such devices can measure activity and sleep patterns, none of them has yet been scientifically validated, and thus are not always appropriate to be used in clinical and scientific settings. Wearables have been investigated in the context of predicting the success of future guide dogs ( [16,13]), impacting the bonding between dog and owner [17,18], and supporting the relationship between guide dog centers and puppy raisers ( [19]). van der Linden et al [20] provide a comprehensive overview of commercially available dog trackers, discussing also their privacy implications.…”