Small Project and Travel Awards
Intelligent Systems for Animal Welfare
Dr Anna Zamansky asks an interesting question: “Can we take advantage of state-of-the-art scientific achievements in informatics and artificial intelligence to improve animal welfare?” Dr Zamansky, Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel, chaired a Symposium, supported by UFAW, entitled: ‘Intelligent Systems for Animal Welfare’ (ISAWEL’14). ISAWEL’14 was attended by people working in Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), neural networking, robotics, and animal welfare, the aim being to “bring together animal scientists who could provide expertise on welfare problems, and computer scientists who could provide insights into their possible technological solutions”.
One paper discussed how to design a ‘smart toy’ for the cognitive enrichment of elephants. Other presentations looked into how animals could be provided with more control over their environment, which has been shown to improve welfare. One such paper investigated the requirements for a dog ‘smart kennel’, which would integrate interactive and monitoring technology to allow dogs to control elements of their surroundings (eg privacy screens, exit flaps to outside areas, interactive toys) and also provide staff with data to help them monitor the dog’s welfare.
