Anna Zamansky

University of Haifa | haifa · Department of Information Systems

In animal research, automation of affective states recognition has so far mainly addressed pain in a few species. Emotional states remain uncharted territories, especially in dogs, due to the complexity of their facial morphology and expressions. This study contributes to fill this gap in two aspects. First, it is the first to address dog emotional...

Advances in animal motion tracking and pose recognition have been a game changer in the study of animal behavior. Recently, an increasing number of works go ‘deeper’ than tracking, and address automated recognition of animals’ internal states such as emotions and pain with the aim of improving animal welfare, making this a timely moment for a syste...

Ataxia is an impairment of the coordination of movement or the interaction of associated muscles, accompanied by a disturbance of the gait pattern. Diagnosis of this clinical sign, and evaluation of its severity is usually done using subjective scales during neurological examination. In this exploratory study we investigated if inertial sensors in...

Internal affective states are closely linked to facial expressions in both human and many non-human animals. For some animal species, objective tools for facial expression analysis such as AnimalFACS are available and are only just beginning to be increasingly used. However, their use requires special expertise, training, and certification, while t...

Advances in animal motion tracking and pose recognition have been a game changer in the study of animal behavior. Recently, an increasing number of works go 'deeper' than tracking, and address automated recognition of animals' internal states such as emotions and pain with the aim of improving animal welfare, making this a timely moment for a syste...

Similarly to humans, facial expressions in animals are closely linked with emotional states. However, in contrast to the human domain, automated recognition of emotional states from facial expressions in animals is underexplored, mainly due to difficulties in data collection and establishment of ground truth concerning emotional states of non-verba...

Facial expressions in non-human animals are closely linked to their internal affective states, with the majority of empirical work focusing on facial shape changes associated with pain. However, existing tools for facial expression analysis are prone to human subjectivity and bias, and in many cases also require special expertise and training. This...

Traditional methods of data analysis in animal behavior research are usually based on measuring behavior by manually coding a set of chosen behavioral parameters, which is naturally prone to human bias and error, and is also a tedious labor-intensive task. Machine learning techniques are increasingly applied to support researchers in this field, mo...

Problem definition: Data errors in business processes can be a source for exceptions and hamper business outcomes. Relevance: The paper proposes a method for analyzing data inaccuracy issues already at process design time, in order to support process designers by identifying process parts where data errors might remain unrecognized, so decisions co...

Facial expressions in non-human animals are closely linked to their internal affective states , with the majority of empirical work focusing on facial shape changes associated with pain. However, existing tools for facial expression analysis are prone to human subjectivity and bias, and in many cases also require special expertise and training. Thi...

Animal shelters have been found to represent stressful environments for pet dogs, both affecting behavior and influencing welfare. The current COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light new uncertainties in animal sheltering practices which may affect shelter dog behavior in unexpected ways. To evaluate this, we analyzed changes in dog activity levels...

Digital technologies that help us take care of our dogs are becoming more widespread. Yet, little research explores what the role of technology in the human-dog relationship should be. We conducted a mixed-method study incorporating quantitative and qualitative thematic analysis of 155 UK dog owners reflecting on their daily routines and technology...

IoT has long since come to the pet industry resulting in a proliferation of data-intensive devices including tracking anything from activity, health, to location. The resulting 'Internet of Pets' is generating large volumes of animal data which, due to the close link between the digital profile of companion animals held as pets (e.g., cats and dogs...

Canine ADHD-like behavior is a behavioral problem that often compromises dogs’ well-being, as well as the quality of life of their owners; early diagnosis and clinical intervention are often critical for successful treatment, which usually involves medication and/or behavioral modification. Diagnosis mainly relies on owner reports and some assessme...

Epilepsy is the most common chronic neurological disease in humans and dogs. Seizures greatly impact patients' and caretakers' quality of life. One of the caretakers' major concerns is that seizures may remain unnoticed or may be noticed too late. There is need for reliable detection of seizures in order to apply quick emergency treatment for preve...

We recall some of the better known approaches to non-classical logics, with an emphasis on the contributions of Arnon Avron to the subject and in relation to the papers in this volume.

Digital technologies are increasingly used by law enforcement in forensic processes. This opens the door to new opportunities for the use of conceptual modeling techniques to support pro-active collection and modeling of crime scene evidence—especially for the more challenging case of soft evidence. As opposed to digital evidence and other ‘hard’ e...

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 i...

Hyperactivity in dogs is discussed as being increasingly linked with human Attention Deficit Hyperactiv-ity Disorder. The French veterinary psychiatry community has proposed a precise definition of an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-like syndrome in dogs called Hypersensitivity-Hyperactivity syndrome (HSHA). Dogs suffering from severe HSHA...

Computational animal behavior analysis (CABA) is an emerging field which aims to apply AI techniques to support animal behavior analysis. The need for computational approaches which facilitate ‘objectivization’ and quantification of behavioral characteristics of animals is widely acknowledged within several animal-related scientific disciplines. St...

This book is a collection of contributions honouring Arnon Avron’s seminal work on the semantics and proof theory of non-classical logics. It includes presentations of advanced work by some of the most esteemed scholars working on semantic and proof-theoretical aspects of computer science logic. Topics in this book include frameworks for paraconsis...

Behavioural studies revealed that the dog–human relationship resembles the human mother–child bond, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report the results of a multi-method approach combining fMRI (N = 17), eye-tracking (N = 15), and behavioural preference tests (N = 24) to explore the engagement of an attachment-like system in d...

Measurement of behavior a major challenge in many animal-related disciplines, including ACI. This usually requires choosing specific parameters for measuring, related to the investigated hypothesis. Therefore, a key challenge is determining a priori what parameters are informational for a given experiment. The scope of this challenge is raised even...

Paraconsistent logics are logics that, in contrast to classical and intuitionistic logic, do not trivialize inconsistent theories. In this paper we take a paraconsistent view on two famous modal logics: B and S5. We use for this a well-known general method for turning modal logics to paraconsistent logics by defining a new (paraconsistent) negation...

Food security is a societal issue of increasing importance requiring careful consideration of the way we produce, process, and distribute food [2], [6]. Digital technologies are increasingly used to optimize processes to support these activities, and therefore, bear important implications for food security. In this article, we focus in particular o...

The rapid development of algorithms for skeletal postural detection with relatively inexpensive contactless systems and cameras opens up the possibility of monitoring and assessing the health and wellbeing of humans. However, the evaluation and confirmation of posture classifications are still needed. The purpose of this study was therefore to deve...

In many cases, software artifacts share similarity across projects and development teams. However, often this similarity is only partially reflected on the level of design and implementation, and therefore the possibilities for its detection are limited in current variability analysis, clone detection, and application search approaches. In this pap...

We report on a mixed-method, comparative study investigating whether there is a difference between privacy concerns expressed about pet wearables as opposed to human wearables-and more importantly, why. We extracted the privacy concerns found in product reviews (N=8,038) of pet wearables (activity, location, and dual-function trackers), contrasting...

Computational approaches were called for to address the challenges of more objective behavior assessment which would be less reliant on owner reports. This study aims to use computational analysis for investigating a hypothesis that dogs with ADHD-like (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) behavior exhibit characteristic movement patterns dire...

The problem of inconsistency in requirements engineering has been in the spotlight of the RE community from the early 1990s. In the early years, inconsistency was perceived in the literature as a problem that needs to be eliminated on sight. More recently, it has become recognized that maintaining consistency at all times is not only infeasible, bu...

This paper aims to empirically explore the state of practical applications of paraconsistent logics. To this end, we performed an exploratory literature review, analysing papers published between the years 2015 and 2018. Paraconsistent formalisms based on annotated logics are practically the sole type of approach we found to be applied in engineeri...

One of the most important tools for animal behavior and animal welfare scientists is video-based analysis. Despite the fact that automatic analysis system exists for many species, field of automated video-based behavior analysis doesn't have an effective tool for higher animals, as dogs and therefore scientists have to use manual analysis. This wor...

Automatic age estimation is a challenging problem attracting attention of the computer vision and pattern recognition communities due to its many practical applications. Artificial neural networks, such as CNNs are a popular tool for tackling this problem, and several datasets which can be used for training models are available. Despite the fact th...

Video-based analysis is one of the most important tools of animal behavior and animal welfare scientists. While automatic analysis systems exist for many species, this problem has not yet been adequately addressed for one of the most studied species in animal science—dogs. In this paper we describe a system developed for analyzing sleeping patterns...

Pet wearables increasing popularity on the market places them also in the spotlight of ACI research. Recent studies have shown that they have the potential to impact the human-pet bond, improve caregiving and increase the motivation of owners' for physical exercising with their pets. Thus pet wearables provide pets with a 'digital voice' to speak u...

Pet wearables are increasingly prevalent, with many incorporating location-tracking functionalities, which may reveal privacy-sensitive data about their owners' daily patterns. Typically , these devices are designed for cat (felis catus) or dog (canis familiaris) usage. However, the difference between cat and dog owners in how they interact with th...

Activity trackers for dogs are increasingly popular, having the potential to improve pets' welfare and providing a 'digital voice' for expressing their needs. ACI research has so far mainly focused on their impact on the pet-human bond. However, also privacy considerations play an important role as they may pose significant barriers towards their w...

The field of veterinary healthcare informatics is still in its infancy, and state of the art solutions from human healthcare are not easily adapted. Internet of Things and wearable technologies, as well as recent developments in telehealth legislation may be bringing a wind of change, making it a timely moment to initiate a discussion on the possib...

This research was aimed at eliciting the requirements of practitioners who use conceptual modeling in their professional work for the visual notations of modeling languages. While the use of conceptual modeling in practice has been addressed, what practitioners in fact require of the visual notation of the modeling languages they use has received l...

The vision of automated support for the investigation of logics, proposed decades ago, has been implemented in many forms, producing numerous tools that analyze various logical properties (e.g., cut-elimination, semantics, and more). However, full ‘automation of automated reasoning’ in the sense of automatic generation of efficient provers has rema...

As an increasingly prevalent class of consumer device, pet wearables hold more privacy implications than might at first be apparent. Whilst marketed as devices for pets, through analysis of privacy policies we show that more data is captured about owners than pets-and what data is captured remains vague.

This is a report of three ZooJams that have taken place at the annual Animal-Computer Interaction conference. The ZooJam is a type of workshop whose aim is to extend the reach of UX design beyond human experience in order to become inclusive of other species and their interactions with technology. Our attempts have knitted together colleagues from...

As software becomes more complex, reusing and integrating artifacts from existing projects that may be taken from open or organization-proprietary repositories is becoming an increasingly important practice. This practice requires an in-depth understanding of the projects to be reused and particularly their common and variable features and their no...

We propose a logical language for specifying combinatorial models, which employs the notion of sets and their complements to overcome some weaknesses of the use of standard Boolean semantics. The proposed language may lead to better modelling techniques in combinatorial test design, with the potential to lower the cognitive load of the modeller and...

The field of veterinary healthcare informatics is still in its infancy, and state of the art solutions from human healthcare are not easily adapted. IoT and wearable technologies may be bringing a wind of change, as large amounts of health data of animals are now being produced. It makes this a timely moment to initiate a discussion on the possibil...

The AAAI-18 workshop program included 15 workshops covering a wide range of topics in AI. Workshops were held Sunday and Monday, February 2–7, 2018, at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. This report contains summaries of the Affective Content Analysis workshop; the Artificial Intelligence Applied to Assistive Technolog...

The billion dollars' worth pet industry is catching up on the wearables market, as pet activity and location trackers are increasingly worn by our furry friends. Despite the growing body of work on user perceptions of human wearables, very few works have addressed canine activity trackers and their impact on pet owners' lifestyles and the human-ani...

Canine behavioral disorders, such as various forms of fear and anxiety, are a major threat for the well-being of dogs and their owners. They are also the main cause for dog abandonment and relinquishment to shelters. Timely diagnosis and treatment of such problems is a complex task, requiring extensive behavioral expertise. Accurate classification...

In medicine one frequently deals with vague information. As a tool for reasoning in this area, fuzzy logic suggests itself. In this paper we explore the applicability of the basic ideas of fuzzy set theory in the context of medical assessment questionnaires, which are commonly used, for instance, to support the diagnosis of psychological disorders....

Guide puppy raisers play a crucial role in the process of training assistance dogs supporting mobility of the visually impaired. Recent technological developments bring about a plethora of IT-based solutions, such as canine activity trackers and mobile apps, that could provide novel benefits in supporting the puppy raisers in their important contri...

Advances in modern technology, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and ubiquitous computing, open up new exciting opportunities for technology for animals. This is evidenced by the explosion of products and gadgets available for pets, digital enrichment for captive animals in zoos, sensor based smart farming, etc. At the same time, the emerging di...

The use of lightweight formal methods (LFM) for the development of industrial applications has become a major trend. Although the term "lightweight formal methods" has been used for over ten years now, there seems to be no common agreement on what "lightweight" actually means, and different communities apply the term in all kinds of ways. In this p...

Automatic analysis of animal behavior has the potential to revolutionize the work of animal science and ACI researchers. Many tracking and behavior analysis systems exist for different species, such as birds, insects and mice, but behavior analysis in the canine domain still remains a challenging task. In this research-in-progress paper we describe...

Six years ago the ACI manifesto marked the birth of ACI as a scientific discipline. Since then ACI has been rapidly evolving, as can be witnessed by the variety of publications, conferences and workshops on the topic. This evolution makes it timely to explore the issue of ACI education. What constitutes the toolbox of practitioners working in the f...

This workshop will allow participants to work together to devise novel forms of technically enhanced enrichment for farm animals. It will take the format of a gamejam, whereby teams will be given clear briefs, they will brainstorm concepts and present their ideas to the group for feedback and analysis.

In this paper we argue that the traditional syllabus of logic courses for computer science is outdated and missing its purposes, therefore contributing to the gradual relegation of logic from the computing curricula. We further provide some practical recommendations and directions that need to be considered in the adaptation of the logic course syl...

Playful interaction of pets with tablets is a spreading phenomenon. Thousands of videos of people giving tablets to their pets to "play" can be found online, and training schools are offering classes teaching tablet skills for dogs. While the nature of pets "playing" with tablets is yet to be fully understood, some works highlight the potential dan...

The advance of modern technologies opens new exciting opportunities for computer-based systems for animals. There is an explosion of products and gadgets for animals, such as wellness monitoring applications (e.g., FitBark and PetPace), automatic food dispensers, digital enrichment, and many more. The emerging discipline of Animal-Computer Interact...

This paper proposes a systematic framework for applying the Physics of Notations (PoN), a theory for the design of cognitively effective visual notations. The PoN consists of nine principles, but not all principles lend themselves equally to a clear and unambiguous operationalization. As a result, many visual notations designed according to the PoN...

With the advance of modern technologies, computer-based systems for animals are gaining popularity. In particular, there is an explosion of products and gadgets for pets: wellness monitoring applications (e.g., FitBark and PetPace), automatic food dispensers, cognitive enrichment apps, and many more. Furthermore, the discipline of Animal-Computer I...

This research-in-progress paper proposes the need for a move towards more meaningful variability of visual notations. Evidence accumulated via an online survey on the requirements practitioners have for visual notations, indicate the need for variability of a modeling languages visual notation. Widely used modeling languages in practice such as UML...

Business processes are designed with the assumption that the data used by the process is an accurate reflection of reality. However, this assumption does not always hold, and situations of data inaccuracy might occur which bear substantial consequences to the process and to business goals. Until now, data inaccuracy has mainly been addressed in the...

Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) is a new and quickly developing discipline, which is closely related to HCI and is making reference to some of its theoretical frameworks and research methodologies. The first edition of the Workshop on Research Methods in ACI (RM4ACI) was co-located with the Third International Conference on Animal-Computer Intera...

Five years have passed since the paper by Clara Mancini, titled "Animal Computer Interaction - a manifesto" marked the beginning of ACI as a scientific discipline. In these five years the "baby" discipline has grown significantly, as witnessed by numerous publications and scientific events. This year ACI'16 takes place for the first time as an inde...

The increasing use of digital games for pets' enrichment and entertainment calls for better understanding of this phenomenon. While there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of pets "playing" digital games on computers, the nature of such interactions is yet to be understood. Humans - both pet owners and pet professionals, play a pivotal role in shaping...

As drones are quickly becoming part of our everyday lives, dogs become inevitably exposed to them. Moreover, dog-drone interactions have far-reaching applications in search and rescue operations and other domains. This short note calls for taking an ACI, user-centric perspective on dog-drone interaction, informing the design of interactions which a...

Software is a crucial component of many products and often is a product in itself. Software artifacts are typically developed for particular needs. Often, identifying software variants is important for increasing reuse, reducing time and costs of development and maintenance, increasing quality and reliability, and improving productivity. We propose...