Pets can ring owners with DogPhone

Researchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone.

The device – nicknamed the DogPhone – is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone, reports The Guardian.

The owner can choose whether to take the call, and when to hang up, while they can also place a call to their pet – although the dog has to move the ball to pick up.

 “All this [existing] technology allows you to measure your pets’ steps or ring your pets or remotely give your dog food, but your dog doesn’t really have any choices,” said Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, of the University of Glasgow, and first author of the research used to create the device. She added giving animals choice and control had been shown to improve their welfare and wellbeing.

The DogPhone considers both owner and the dog – and gives the latter a sense of agency, she said.

“This is just one way to demonstrate that dogs can control technology,” said Hirskyj-Douglas. “We can build technology for dogs.”

While a canine social media, or FaceBark, has yet to be created, Hirskyj-Douglas said she envisages a future where dogs could call each other.

“There’s so many different possibilities that you could have,” she said.

The research, which is published in the Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Computer-Human interaction and being is presented at the 2021 ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference in Łódź, Poland, reveals how Hirskyj-Douglas and researchers from Aalto University in Finland settled on a soft ball to create the device.

The DogPhone underwent a number of iterations to ensure it had the right level of sensitivity towards movement – these were tested over 16 days by Hirskyj-Douglas and her nine-year-old black labrador, Zack.