Canine Motion Control Using Bright Spotlight Devices Mounted on a Suit

Abstract

Engineering to produce stimuli that trigger an organism's habits allows us to control it noninvasively. Because canines already have the habit to follow a light spot, light is a good stimulus for controlling their motion. We employed green laser beams to successfully control canine motion indoors. We developed a suit equipped with laser beam devices that face front, left, and right. The canine wore the suit and followed a light spot on the ground. Its trajectory was controlled remotely by switching the lights on the suit. However, this laser beam spot was too weak and small to be visible in grassy fields outdoors. Here, we propose a spotlight device that irradiates a bright and large spot (70 mm in diameter) for outdoor environments. The proposed spotlight device consists of a high brightness LED and a convex lens. To evaluate its performance, we conducted indoor and outdoor experiments using three canines. In the indoor experiments, the success rates of controlling the canine's motions were 100%, 83.3%, and 93.3% for each of the three canines, respectively. In outdoor experiments, these rates were 100%, 57.1%, and 62.5%, respectively. Hence, the proposed spotlight devices are effective for controlling a canine even in outdoor environments.

Electrocardiogram Measurement and Emotion Estimation of Working Dogs

“…The proposed method provided easy and reliable ECG measurement and emotion estimation of working dogs. These results will be possible to support other studies [23,24,25,26,27]. In addition, these results will lead to the development of new adaptation destinations for the robot and AI technology.…”

“…Research to enhance the capabilities of working dogs using robot and AI technology will become increasingly important in the future. Several studies suggested such bright futures of working dogs [23,24,25,26,27]. Understanding working dogs' emotions is an important key issue to help mutual understanding between humans and working dogs.…”

Motor Imagery Based Continuous Teleoperation Robot Control with Tactile Feedback

“…In the past, a variety of studies focused on living organisms interaction with robotic cues [31][32][33][34] and controlling the robot through BCI, but there have been few research on the control of teleoperation robot based on motor imagery EEG. Meanwhile, most of the previous research groups focus on the conventional two class or four class classification from EEG signals to get one or four control commands.…”