When most people think of computer science, they often immediately picture a guy wearing a hoodie, sitting in his basement in the dark programming on his computer. Many people don't realize that almost every single discipline and research study relates in some way to computer science! Even Animal Science!
Researchers at North Carolina State University have researched and developed a customized suite of technologies that allows a computer to train a dog autonomously, with the computer effectively responding to the dog based on the dog's body language.
This approach can be used to train dogs more efficiently and effectively. The researchers used sensors in custom dog harnesses to monitor a dog's posture, while the computer reinforces the correct behavior quickly and with near-perfect consistency.
This technology integrates fundamental principles of animal learning into a computational system, and can be applied to a wide range of canine behavior. For example, it could be used to more quickly train service dogs. Researchers predict that in the next couple of years, this technology will be used in conjunction with human-directed training
In the long term, researchers at NCSU are interested in using this approach of animal-computer interaction to allow dogs to 'use' computers, like "...allowing an explosive detection dog to safely and clearly mark when it detects components of a bomb, or allowing diabetic alert dogs to use their physical posture and behaviors to call for help".
Full research article : https://news.ncsu.edu/2016/05/dog-training-tech-2016/
