Empathetic media and living media

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?

Our digital world evolves towards ubiquitous and intuitive scenarios, filled with interconnected and transparent computing devices which ease our daily activities. We have approached this evolution of technology in a strictly human-centric manner. There are, however, plenty of species, among them our pets, which could also profit from these technological advances. A new field in Computer Science, called Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), aims at filling this technological gap by developing systems and interfaces specifically designed for animals. This paper envisions how ACI could be extended to enhance the most natural animal behavior: play. This work explains how interactive environments could become playful scenarios where animals enjoy, learn and interact with technology, improving their wellbeingThis work is partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). The work of Patricia Pons is supported by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports (FPU13/03831). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). We also thank the Valencian Society for the Protection of Animals and Plants (SVPAP) for their cooperation.Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Beyond the limits of digital interaction: should animals play with interactive environments?. ACM. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/65361

Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI): changing perspective on HCI, participation and sustainability

In the spirit of this year’s conference theme ‘changing perspectives’, this paper invites the CHI community to glance at interaction design through the lense of Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI). In particular, I argue that such a perspective could have at least three benefits: strengthening HCI as a discipline; broadening participation in Interaction Design; and supporting CHI’s commitment to sustainability. I make the case that, far from being a niche research area, ACI is directly relevant to and even encompasses HCI. Thus ACI research firmly belongs at CHI

Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals

© ACM 2015. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in ACM. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (p. 59). http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007.[EN] Digital games for animals within Animal Computer Interaction are usually single-device oriented, however richer interactions could be delivered by considering multimodal environments and expanding the number of technological elements involved. In these playful ecosystems, animals could be either alone or accompanied by human beings, but in both cases the system should react properly to the interactions of all the players, creating more engaging and natural games. Technologically-mediated playful scenarios for animals will therefore require contextual information about the game participants, such as their location or body posture, in order to suitably adapt the system reactions. This paper presents a depth-based tracking system for cats capable of detecting their location, body posture and field of view. The proposed system could also be extended to locate and detect human gestures and track small robots, becoming a promising component in the creation of intelligent interspecies playful environments.Work supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the EDRF-FEDER (TIN2014-60077-R). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by a national grant from the Spanish MECD (FPU13/03831). Alejandro Catalá also received support from a VALi+d fellowship from the GVA (APOSTD/2013/013). Special thanks to our cat participants, their owners, and our feline caretakers and therapistsPons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Developing a depth-based tracking systems for interactive playful environments with animals. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2832932.2837007SJan Bednarik and David Herman. 2015. Human gesture recognition using top view depth data obtained from Kinect sensor.Excel. - Student Conf. Innov. Technol. Sci. IT, 1--8.Hrvoje Benko, Andrew D. Wilson, Federico Zannier, and Hrvoje Benko. 2014. Dyadic projected spatial augmented reality.Proc. 27th Annu. ACM Symp. User interface Softw. Technol. - UIST '14, 645--655.Alper Bozkurt, David L Roberts, Barbara L Sherman, et al. 2014. Toward Cyber-Enhanced Working Dogs for Search and Rescue.IEEE Intell. Syst. 29, 6, 32--39.Rita Brugarolas, Robert T. Loftin, Pu Yang, David L. Roberts, Barbara Sherman, and Alper Bozkurt. 2013. 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Designing technologies for playful interspecies communication

This one-day workshop examines how we might use technologies to support design for playful interspecies communication and considers some of the potential implications. Here we explore aspects of playful technology and reflect on what opportunities computers can provide for facilitating communication between species. The workshop's focal activity will be the co-creation of some theoretical systems designed for specific multi-species scenarios. Through our activities, we aim to pave the way for designing technology that promotes interspecies communication, drawing input not only from ACI practitioners but also from those of the broader HCI and animal science community, who may be stakeholders in facilitating, expanding, and/or redefining playful technology

Animal Ludens: Building Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals

© ACM (2014). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in {Source Publication}, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2693787.2693794Looking for effective ways to understand how animals interact with computer-mediated systems, Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) research should rely on the most natural and intrinsic behavior among the majority of living species: play. Animals are naturally motivated towards playing. Playful environments are, therefore, a promising scenario in which to start developing animal-centered ecosystems, and there are plenty of circumstances where playful environments could help to improve animals well-being. However, developing a custom system for each possible context remains unfeasible, and more appealing solutions are required. If playful environments were equipped with intelligent capabilities, they could learn from the animals behavior and automatically adapt themselves to the animals needs and preferences by creating engaging playful activities for different purposes. Hence, this work will define intelligent playful environments for animals and explain how Ambient Intelligence (AmI) can contribute to create adaptable playful experiences for animals in order to improve their quality of life.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the National R&D&I Program within the project CreateWorlds (TIN2010-20488). It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d Program of the Conselleria d'Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). 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Animal-Computer Interaction: the emergence of a discipline

In this editorial to the IJHCS Special Issue on Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI), we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in this emerging field, outlining the main scientific interests of its developing community, in a broader cultural context of evolving human-animal relations. We summarise the core aims proposed for the development of ACI as a discipline, discussing the challenges these pose and how ACI researchers are trying to address them. We then introduce the contributions to the Special Issue, showing how they illustrate some of the key issues that characterise the current state-of-the-art in ACI, and finally reflect on how the journey ahead towards developing an ACI discipline could be undertaken

Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-546-4_6Play stands as one of the most natural and inherent behavior among the majority of living species, specifically humans and animals. Human play has evolved significantly over the years, and so have done the artifacts which allow us to play: from children playing tag games without any tools other than their bodies, to modern video games using haptic and wearable devices to augment the playful experience. However, this ludic revolution has not been the same for the humans’ closest companions, our pets. Recently, a new discipline inside the human–computer interaction (HCI) community, called animal–computer interaction (ACI), has focused its attention on improving animals’ welfare using technology. Several works in the ACI field rely on playful interfaces to mediate this digital communication between animals and humans. Until now, the development of these interfaces only comprises a single goal or activity, and its adaptation to the animals’ needs requires the developers’ intervention. This work analyzes the existing approaches, proposing a more generic and autonomous system aimed at addressing several aspects of animal welfare at a time: Intelligent Playful Environments for Animals. The great potential of these systems is discussed, explaining how incorporating intelligent capabilities within playful environments could allow learning from the animals’ behavior and automatically adapt the game to the animals’ needs and preferences. The engaging playful activities created with these systems could serve different purposes and eventually improve animals’ quality of life.This work was partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science andInnovation under the National R&D&I Program within the projects Create Worlds (TIN2010-20488) and SUPEREMOS (TIN2014-60077-R), and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It also received support from a postdoctoral fellowship within theVALi+d Program of the Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura I Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) awarded to Alejandro Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013). The work of Patricia Pons has been supported by the Universitat Politècnica de València under the “Beca de Excelencia” program and currently by an FPU fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (FPU13/03831).Pons Tomás, P.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2015). Envisioning Future Playful Interactive Environments for Animals. 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In: CHI ’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2661–2669 (2010

Microbial content generation for natural terrains in computer games

Procedural content generation (PCG) has been applied since several decades to fulfill various game-related design needs. Besides bio-inspired methods, living (non-human) organisms were used in computer games for various purposes, such as behavior generation, data gathering, and player education. No living organisms were used for the generation of virtual terrains in games. Such an approach to terrain generation could benefit from morphological similarity between natural terrains and colonies of microbial organisms, real-time development of terrains over time, and educational opportunities. We successfully executed an experiment in which we used growing bacterial and fungal cultures for generating naturally appearing virtual terrains in real-time. Concludingly, we confirm the feasibility of using living organisms in real-time non-behavioral PCG and reflect on its potential impact.Computer Systems, Imagery and Medi

Distribución geográfica del género Anastrepha en la provincia de Cotopaxi.

The research was carried out from 2014 to 2020. The general objective was to know the geographical distribution of the species of fruit flies of the genus Anastrepha in Cotopaxi Province. To identify, it was evaluated in hosts and species captured in McPhaill traps. To monitor, McPhaill traps were used, which serves as a food attractant; the hydrolyzed protein was used, prepared based on the following proportions of ingredients for 1 lt of mixture: Hydrolyzed Protein 50 to 100 cc (5 to 10%), granules Borax 30 g (3%), and Water 920 to 870 cc. 250 cc .of the mixture is placed in each trap, and the trap is placed on the fruit trees. The collection of data and specimens was carried out every seven days. Once the samples of both specimens and fruits were obtained, the laboratory proceeded as follows: a) The fruits that enter the laboratory (maturation area) were weighed and placed in the hatching chamber, 5 cm of sand and covered with mesh, in a sheltered and ventilated place. b) Once they have hatched or reached their adult stage where flies reach all the optimal characteristics for their identification at the species level. c) To identify and classify the different Anastrepha species, the specific dichotomous keys for the identification of fruit flies by Fernández, Tigrero, Sagacarpa, and Korytkowski were used. Both the fruit flies collected from the traps and those from the hatching chambers were identified at a morphological level, and particular emphasis was placed on the female genitalia, considering necessary to investigate in this field due to the few studies carried out in the country and the importance that has taken over fruit growing for export purposes in Cotopaxi province. In Cotopaxi province, nine species of fruit flies of the genus Anastrepha were identified captured in traps placed on cultivated plants and backyard plants, which are: Anastrepha fraterculus, Anastrepha striata, Anastrepha distincta, Anastrepha leptozona, Anastrepha obliqua, Anastrepha serpentina, Anastrepha atrox, Anastrepha pickeli, and Anastrepha sp. In the fruit trees that are hosts of fruit flies of the Anastrepha genus: "Capulí" (Prunus salicifolia), Peach (Prunus persica), "Guaba" (Inga edulis), Guava (Psidium guajava), Blackberry (Rubus ulmifolius), Orange (Citrus x sinensis), Star apple (Chrysophyllum cainito) and Sour orange (Citrus × aurantium).La investigación se realizó entre los años 2014 al 2020. El objetivo general fue Conocer la distribución geográfica de las especies de moscas de la fruta del género Anastrepha en la Provincia de Cotopaxi. Para la identificación se evaluó en hospedantes y especies capturadas entrampas McPhaill. Para el monitoreo se utilizaron trampas McPhaill la cual sirve como atrayente alimenticio, se utilizó la proteína hidrolizada, la cual se preparó en base a las siguientes proporciones de ingredientes para 1 lt de mezcla: Proteína Hidrolizada 50 a 100 cc (5 a 10 %), Bórax granulado 30 g (3 %) y Agua 920 a 870 cc., en cada trampa se coloca 250 cc de la mezcla y la trampa se coloca en los árboles frutales. La colecta de datos y especímenes se realizó cada siete días. Una vez obtenida las muestras tanto de especímenes como de frutos se procedió de la siguiente manera en el laboratorio: a) Los frutos al ingresar al laboratorio (Área de maduración) se los peso y se ubicó en la cámara eclosionadora, 5 cm de arena y cubiertas con malla, en un lugar abrigado y ventilado. b) Una vez eclosionado o llegado a su estado adulto y en esta etapa las moscas alcanzan todas las características óptimas para su identificación a nivel de especie. c) Para la identificación y clasificación de las diferentes especies de Anastrepha se empleó las claves dicotómicas específicas de identificación de moscas de la fruta de Fernández, Tigrero, Sagacarpa y de Korytkowski. Tanto las moscas de la fruta recolectadas de las trampas como los provenientes de las cámaras eclocionadoras se identificaron a nivel morfológico y se puso especial énfasis en la genitalia femenina, considerandose necesario indagar en este campo, debido los escasos estudios realizados en el país y a la importancia que ha tomado la fruticultura con fines de exportación en la provincia de Cotopaxi. En la provincia de Cotopaxi se identificaron nueve especies de moscas de la fruta del género Anastrepha capturadas en trampas colocadas en plantas cultivadas y plantas traspatio las cuales son: Anastrepha fraterculus, Anastrepha striata, Anastrepha distincta, Anastrepha leptozona, Anastrepha obliqua, Anastrepha serpentina, Anastrepha atrox, Anastrepha pickeli y Anastrepha sp. En los frutales que son hospedantes de moscas de la fruta del género Anastrepha tenemos ocho: Capulí (Prunus salicifolia), Durazno (Prunus pérsica), Guaba (Inga edulis), Guayaba (Psidium guajava), Mora (Rubus ulmifolius), Naranja (Citrus x sinensis), Caimito (Chrysophyllum cainito) y Naranja agria (Citrus × aurantium). La distribución geográfica de especies emergidas en hospedantes tenemos que Anastrepha fraterculus se encuentra en los Cantones de: Salcedo, Pujili, Sigchos y La Mana; Anastrepha serpentina se encuentra en Saquisili y Anastrepha striata se encuentra en Pujilí. La distribución geográfica de las especies capturadas en trampas tenemos que Anastrepha fraterculus se encuentra distribuida en los Cantones de: Pangua, Latacunga, Pujili, Salcedo, Sigchos y La Mana; Anastrepha leptozona se encuentra en: Pangua, Pujili y La Mana; Anastrepha striata se encuentra en Pangua, Pujili y La Mana; Anastrepha sp., se encuentra en: Pangua, Latacunga y Pujili; Anastrepha distincta se encuentra en: Pangua y La Mana; Anastrepha obliqua se encuentra en: Pangua y Pujili; Anastrepha serpentina se encuentra en Pangua y La Mana; Anastrepha pickeli se encuentra en Sigchos y Anastrepha atrox se encuentra en Pangua. De las especies identificadas en hospedantes y capturadas en las trampas McPhaill. la de mayor distribución geográfica es Anastrepha fraterculus debido a su alta población y distribución en la zona de estudio