Video: Dogs team up with drones to find disaster victims

Dogs that help humans in danger can do so much more when they have technology designed especially for paws and noses

CLARA MANCINI’S colleagues used to laugh when she talked about her work. Mancini finds ways to improve our experience of interactive technologies. Should there be buttons? How many, how large, what colour? As gadget designers well know, little things can make a big difference.

But Mancini had shifted her focus to a group of users with very different needs. Dogs. “It was very hard at the beginning,” says Mancini. “People saw this as something not quite to be taken seriously, as something a little bit funny and cute.”

Yet dogs are an integral part of our everyday lives, and that creates a growing need for them to interact with technology. “Dogs are already used in search and rescue, in medicine, as service animals, to help autistic kids and more,” says Alper Bozkurt, an electrical and computer engineer at North Carolina State University in Raleigh who is building a smart harness for dogs. He thinks technology can help rather than hinder. “We’ll be able to make them even better at their jobs,” he says.

Gadgets for animals are on the rise (Image: Jonathan Burton)

But how do you design tech specifically for an animal? What are their needs? How will they best interact with devices? As research tackles these questions, we are learning how to help them help us better. What’s more, insights from working with animals may expand our horizons when it comes to building interfaces for ourselves.

Dogs …