"Dog Cam" Trains Computer Vision Software for Robot Dogs

A dog's purpose can take on new meaning when humans strap a GoPro camera to her head. Such "dog cam" video clips have helped train computer vision software that could someday give rise to robotic canine companions. The idea behind DECADE, described as "a dataset of ego-centric videos from a dog's perspective," is to directly model the behavior of intelligent beings based on how they see and move around within the real world. Vision and movement data from a single dog--an Alaskan Malamute named Kelp M. Redmon--proved capable of training off-the-shelf deep learning algorithms to predict how dogs might react to different situations, such as seeing the owner holding a bag of treats or throwing a ball. "The near-term application would be to model the behavior of the dog and try to make an actual robot dog using this data," said Kiana Ehsani, a PhD student in computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle.