S.N.A.C.K.

Brief excitement ends in disappointment

Robb — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:03:45 +0000

A late night discussion at the S.N.A.C.K. lab led to a Google search: “laptop for dogs.” And we got results!

Unfortunately, everything was not as it seemed at the toshiba.com web page.

Slashdot: Toddler PC Software

Robb — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:54:01 +0000

A border collie’s at least as smart as a toddler. Let’s see if this article gets many contributions: Slashdot

A well documented dog-computer interface

Robb — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:46:26 +0000

An MIT group created an interesting system called Rover@Home. This system’s goal is mediated (remote) dog training, not dog entertainment as is ours. However, it looks like a lot of the work will be informative.

Original article:
Rover@Home: Computer Mediated Remote Interaction Between Humans and Dogs

A summary:
Clicker Training Your Dog Across the Internet: Rover@Home

The Amazon.com Dog-Computer Interface

Robb — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:05:11 +0000

Rufus, an Amazon employee, using a device that’s very similar to our idea:They essentially reproduced the classification test we reported on earlier:

Once he got going, Rufus was pretty good at identifying the bears in the picture, with an accuracy rate in excess of 80%. Admittedly, the task itself was of limited utility but that wasn’t the point.

Even more interesting, they report that Rufus enjoyed spending time with the program:

Rufus has yet to notice that we’ve recycled the [pictures] and he now spends an hour or so each day happily sorting out the bears from the non-bears.

http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2008/04/is-this-a-bear.html

Neural Net Shows Promise Identifying Barking and Subjects

Robb — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 01:48:01 +0000

“Computer Decodes Dog Information”

The accuracy of the software varied . . . while it correctly identified a dog barking at a stranger in 63% of cases, it correctly identified a bark recorded during play just 6% of the time.

The software also varied in its ability to identify individual dogs, depending on the context in which the bark was recorded.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13197

Study Demonstrates Dogs Classifying and Abstracting

Robb — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:32:28 +0000

Researchers at the University of Vienna completed important groundwork that S.N.A.C.K. will build on. The subjects were able to:

Remember a particular picture of a dog vs. a landscape,
Demonstrate this knowledge by tapping the touch-screen with their nose, and
Abstract this knowledge to new pictures of dogs and landscapes.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22026675/

Raw Diets for Dogs Unsupported by Science

Robb — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 07:09:04 +0000

We here at the Seminary are always on the lookout for science-based research on dogs and dog nutrition.

Brennan McKenzie writes,

To begin with, the concept of “evolutionary nutrition” ignores the simple fact that taxonomy and phylogeny are not destiny, nor do they reliably predict the specific details of a species’ biology, including its nutritional needs. Sure, dogs are in the order Carnivora, but so are giant pandas, which are almost exclusively herbivorous. Functionally, dogs are omnivores or facultative carnivores, not obligate carnivores, and they are well-suited to an omnivorous diet regardless of their taxonomic classification or ancestry.

Raw Meat and Bone Diets for Dogs: It’s Enough to Make You BARF