Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas

Many of you out here will have a dog at home that's potentially cut off and isolated from anyone right now.

We as people have managed to bridge this divide just with a quick swipe of our phone, able to contact a loved one with video call or a telephone call.

My research asks, what if we do the same for animals?

What if we allow animals to use the internet and connect online?

Now, you may be laughing and think this is a really strange idea, but many of us already use technology with our pets.

Many people here will have collars which have trackers on, able to detect where their dog or cat is at any point.

And we as researchers often use screen technologies and various different sorts of technologies to monitor and measure animals' cognition and behavior.

When we start to think about it, we actually control a lot of our animals' lives.

We control what they eat, we control where they go, we control what activities they do, and we even control their friends and who they see.

What if we could instead use technology to flip this script?

What if we could use technologies to enable animals to have choice over their lives and control, including their social life?

So I began this journey when I was 21, and I got my dog, Zach, who you can see here.

At the time, I was studying a master's in computer science.

I got really into building Arduino and Raspberry Pi and low-fidelity computer technology.

And I was sitting one day on the sofa with my dog, and I started to think, what if he could also control the TV with me when we were watching it together?

What if, as well as me changing the channel, my dog could do the same?

And importantly, would this even be what a dog would want?

And so I began to build my dog and many different other dogs' computer devices.

I began building these screen devices that detect when a dog gets close and then plays them different sorts of videos.

After using this device with various different dogs, what I found is that all dogs introduced to this device would use this without any form of training.