Does owner personality influence the physical activity and social interactions of their dog(s)?

This study explored whether a dog’s physical activity patterns together with both dog-human and dog-dog social interactions are influenced by the personality of the dog’s owner. Informed by the human personality and exercise literature and using semi-structured interviews, an Internet based questionnaire was designed to provide information regarding seven aspects of a dog’s daily activity profile: frequency and duration of dog walking, number of different routes walked, the number of other people and dogs met whilst out on walks and participation in and number of dog-centred activities involving the owner aside from walking. Respondents (N = 486) also completed the 44 item Big Five personality questionnaire (John and Srivastava, 1999). General or generalised linear models were conducted for each of the dependent variables, to compare their relation with each of the five personality variables, owner age, and whether the owner was with their dog during work hours. Dogs whose owners had a high agreeableness score met a greater number of other people on walks (Wald?21=4.44, p=0.035), whereas those with a high conscientiousness score met fewer people (Wald ?21=6.14, p=0.013). Other significant personality effects involved interactions between two personality traits. For example, dogs of owners with low neuroticism and extraversion scores met a significantly higher number of other dogs/week whilst out on walks (Wald?21=11.48, p=0.001). Similarly, dogs whose owners scored high on conscientiousness and low on extraversion were walked more frequently (F1,182=11.65, p=0.001). Personality was unrelated to duration of walking and both measures of other dog-centred activities involving owners. Dogs whose owners were present during working hours were walked for significantly longer (F1,185=6.89, p=0.009), on more different routes (F1,184=6.01, p=0.015) and met a greater number of other dogs (Wald?21=7.97, p=0.002). Further investigation of owner personality and the value of dogs accompanying their owners during their working hours offer potential for improved understanding of this important aspect of the human-canine relationship.</p

Using robots to understand animal social cognition

In studies on animal cognition live animals are often used to model behaviours, but may not do so reliably. We have been using a robotic bearded dragon (Pogona vitticeps) to investigate social behaviours in a controlled way, providing new insights into reptile cognition.</p

Solving orientation duality for 3D circular features using monocular vision

Methods for estimating the 3D orientation of circular features from a single image result in at least two solutions, of which only one corresponds to the actual orientation of the object. In this paper we propose two new methods for solving this orientation duality problem using a single image. Our first method estimates the resulting ellipse projections in 2D space for the given solutions, then matches them against the image ellipse to infer the true orientation. The second method compares solutions from two co-planar circle features with different centre points, to identify their mutual true orientation. Experimental results show the robustness and the effectiveness of our methods for solving the duality problem, and perform better than state-of-art methods.</p