[Nfbf-l] Someday Your Guide Dog May Have Their Own Wearable Technology

[Alan Dicey]

Someday Your Guide Dog May Have Their Own Wearable Technology
Wearable computing seems to be the next frontier. The Pebble watch and 
Google Glass are being raved about, but wearable technology doesn't just 
have to be for humans. Researchers at Georgia Tech are working on a system 
called FIDO, or Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations. The 
idea is that the dog could activate a sensor that would then transmit either 
a verbal command into a headset or a visual command onto a screen. For 
example, a bomb sniffer dog could tell his handler what kind of bomb it is, 
or a rescue dog could alert someone that he found an injured person. A guide 
dog could tell us that there is an obstruction to our right or in front of 
us. According to the article in technology review, "In an early study, the 
researchers equipped a dog vest with an Arduino microprocessor and tested 
four different sensors that dogs could activate by biting, tugging, or 
putting their mouth nearby. The three service dogs participating in the test 
quickly learned to activate the sensors to set off a tone."
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