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Diver working with dolphin at EPCOT Center's underwater keyboard in Orlando Florida. Picture used with permission – Walt Disney World Corporation.
Source publication
Keyboards and cognitive interfaces for dolphins have a long history. Various modalities of communication (visual, acoustic) and triggering mechanisms (physical, infrared, acoustic) have been utilized. Protocols and frameworks (e.g., the model/rival approach) have improved with the adaptation of methodological techniques from primates and birds. Thi...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... interfaces -underwater visual and acoustic. In 1992Xitco, Gory, and Kuczaj (2001, 2004) designed and initiated use of an underwater keyboard at the Epcot Center in Orlando Florida (Figure 4). This large underwater keyboard held objects in recessed tubes. Dolphins or divers operated the keyboard by breaking an infrared beam to "point" in the tube that held an object. English words were then generated for the diver's knowledge. Similar to Pepperberg and Savage-Rumbaugh's approaches these researchers used a human-based modeling procedure in which a dolphin watched as a model and receiver respectively activated and responded appropriately to key presses. Eventually, each of two dolphin observers learned to respond to human-activated keys and to activate keys themselves, often swimming ahead of the human to the object or location associated with that key. Also in the late 1990's Herzing, Delfour, andPack (2012) implemented an underwater keyboard in the Bahamas with a semi-habituated pod of free-ranging dolphins (Herzing, 1997(Herzing, , 2011). The visual and acoustic system ( Figure 5) was activated when the human activated a sound button or when a dolphin pointed or oriented to a physical key. The system then generated a whistle that was associated with the visual symbol. Using the "model/rival" concept, humans in the water modeled and used the system between each other, exploring the contingencies of the system in the presence of the dolphins. Dolphins also had the opportunity to observe humans using computer-generated sounds in conjunction with human- initiated gazing and pointing behaviors to request various play toys with the overall goal of examining whether and in what contexts the dolphins would begin to produce the same sounds. A small number of female juvenile dolphins were exposed to this keyboard over a four-year ...
Citations
... Such paradigms were often adapted from established techniques used for primates and birds. An extensive review of such systems by Denise Herzing (Herzing, 2016) provides various insights into the design of technologies for communicating with Delphinidae. Her analysis advocated for approaches that keep the human in the loop, rather than aiming for subjective cognitive assessment. ...
Cetaceans show high cognitive abilities and strong social bonds. Their primary sensory modality to communicate and sense the environment is acoustics. Research on their echolocation and social vocalizations typically uses visual and tactile systems adapted from research on primates or birds. Such research would benefit from a purely acoustic communication system to better match their natural capabilities. We argue that a full duplex system, in which signals can flow in both directions simultaneously is essential for communication research. We designed and implemented a full duplex system to acoustically interact with cetaceans in the wild, featuring digital echo-suppression. We pilot tested the system in Arctic Norway and achieved an echo suppression of 18 dB. We discuss the limiting factors and how to improve the echo suppression further. The system enabled vocal interaction with the underwater acoustic scene by allowing experimenters to listen while producing sounds. We describe our motivations, then present our pilot deployment and give examples of initial explorative attempts to vocally interact with wild orcas and humpback whales.
... Because of this, we concluded that any approach to this species should consider modifications to their acoustic environment. Related art and science projects that experimented with cetaceans suggest that the marine animals hear the human-produced noises and respond to them [17][18][19]. Following that notion, we started with a "behaviorist" scheme [20], in which we researched whether our stimuli (the input, in this case) could be effectively received. ...
“The Leviathan’s Playing” cycle is a multidisciplinary research project interacting with gray whales in the Ojo de Liebre lagoon in the Baja California peninsula (Mexico). The project started with a single premise: to read poetry to the whales. After an encouraging initial response to human lyrical stimulus from these cetaceans, the cycle’s efforts were directed toward developing a mediation system with this species and attempting to understand their behavior during close interactions with humans. This paper discusses the project’s findings from 2017 to 2021.
... Such paradigms were often adapted from established techniques used for primates and birds. An extensive review of such systems by Denise Herzing [6] provides various insights into the design of technologies for communicating with Delphinidae. Her analysis advocated for approaches that keep the human in the loop, rather than aiming for subjective cognitive assessment. ...
Cetaceans show high cognitive abilities and strong social bonds. Acoustics is their primary modality to communicate and sense the environment. Research on their echolocation and vocalizations with conspecifics and with humans typically uses visual and tactile systems adapted from research on primates or birds. Such research would benefit from a purely acoustic communication system in which signals flow in both directions simultaneously. We designed and implemented a full duplex system to acoustically interact with cetaceans in the wild, featuring digital echo-suppression. We pilot tested the system in Arctic Norway and achieved an echo suppression of 18 dB leaving room for technical improvements addressed in the discussion. Nevertheless, the system enabled vocal interaction with the underwater acoustic scene by allowing experimenters to listen while producing sounds. We describe our motivations, then present our pilot deployment and give examples of initial explorative attempts to vocally interact with wild orcas and humpback whales.
... The device successfully promoted playful interactions between human and orangutan participants but failed in engaging the animals successfully with the interface. The Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry system designed by Herzing et al. [12] was an underwater keyboard interface that dolphins could use for visual and acoustic signalling. Its goal was to enable dolphins to learn new (whistle-based) signals and to use them to communicate with humans. ...
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.
Technology (digital or otherwise) is a great enabler; it bridges gaps and opens doors and, in the process, alters the reality within which it and its users exist. As technology aimed at non-human animals is becoming commonplace, questions about its efficacy and the ethical implications of its use are becoming ever more pertinent. To explore these issues, we conducted a workshop in which speculative design was used as a means of debating ways through which play, a widespread phenomenon across animal species, can be used as a tool for enabling interspecies communication. We describe the context for this discussion, the methods used, and present a set of speculative designs that illustrate aspects of ethics, equality, and appropriate play in order to provoke further reflection and discussion.
