Feline Fun Park: A Distributed Tangible Interface for Pets and Owners

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Abstract

Many pet owners spend long hours away from home, and are forced to leave their pets unattended and un-entertained during this time. To alleviate this, we have developed a distributed tangible interface that not only promotes pet activity, but that gives the owner the ability to monitor and further encourage cat activity while they are away from the home. Specifically, Feline Fun Park is a computerised ‘cat condo’ that: a) senses cat activity around and within it; b) automatically responds to these activities by triggering a variety of devices that encourage cat interaction with them; c) displays the cat’s activity level to the pet’s distant owner, and d) allows that owner, at his or her discretion, to activate the devices manually across the internet. The system offers a level of automatic interactive entertainment for a pet not possible with traditional toys, where it adapts to various levels of play to keep the cat interested, and where it encourages pet/owner interaction.

Video

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Publisher Link

http://pervasiveconference.org/2007/program_videos.phtml

Citation

JAMES E. YOUNG, Neko Young, Saul Greenberg and Ehud Sharlin. Feline Fun Park: A Distributed Tangible Interface for Pets and Owners. In video session and in adjunct proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, 2007. Pervasive ’07, Toronto, Canada, May 13–15. Video 1:13, paper 4 pages

Bibtext Entry

@INPROCEEDINGS { jim2007,
    AUTHOR = { James E. Young and Neko Young and Saul Greenberg and Ehud Sharlin },
    TITLE = { Feline Fun Park: A Distributed Tangible Interface for Pets and Owners },
    BOOKTITLE = { video session and in adjunct proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive ’07) },
    YEAR = { 2007 },

}