Smart Animal Collar Monitoring for Remote Care and Behavior Alerts
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Solution Overview
Problem
Animal owners face challenges in providing adequate care for their pets when geographically distant, leading to potential harm or death due to lack of proper feeding, watering, and medication, as traditional methods rely heavily on human intervention and third-party caregivers.
Innovation Solution
A remote-controlled animal care system utilizing drone technology, which includes a mobile unit with food, water, and medicine storage, an internal electronic fence transceiver, and an aerial drone for wireless communication and instruction response, enabling remote monitoring and care of animals.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If animal owners are geographically distant from their animals, then they cannot provide direct care, but animals are at risk of neglect and harm
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables animals to serve themselves through automated feeding, watering, and medication dispensing mechanisms. The mobile unit autonomously navigates to animals and delivers care without human intervention, allowing animals to receive consistent care while owners remain distant.
Solution Approach 2:
Manual animal care tasks are replaced by automated mechanical systems including robotic mobile units for delivery, automated dispensing mechanisms for food/water/medicine, and electronic monitoring systems. This substitution maintains care reliability while enabling remote operation.
2Ease of operation
If third-party providers are used for animal care, then owners can be distant, but care quality may be compromised due to oversight
Solution Approach 1:
The system incorporates continuous monitoring through cameras, sensors, and data collection devices that provide real-time feedback to owners about animal conditions, feeding status, water levels, and medication administration. This feedback loop ensures care consistency and allows owners to verify provider performance remotely.
Solution Approach 2:
The automated mobile unit and monitoring systems serve as intermediaries between owners and animals, eliminating the need for third-party human providers. The system mediates care delivery and monitoring, ensuring consistent execution of care tasks without human oversight variability.
3Reliability
If manual monitoring and care tasks are performed, then care can be provided, but owners must be physically present
Solution Approach 1:
The system transitions care delivery from physical proximity (spatial dimension) to remote connectivity (digital dimension). Owners can provide care and monitoring through wireless networks and digital interfaces, eliminating the requirement for physical presence while maintaining direct care quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates digital copies and representations of physical care activities through cameras, sensors, and data logging. Owners can view video feeds, monitor vitals, and track care delivery remotely, effectively copying the physical care experience into the digital domain for distant access.
4Ease of operation
If automated animal care devices are implemented, then remote care is enabled, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The mobile unit is designed as a multi-functional platform that performs navigation, food dispensing, water delivery, medication administration, and data collection within a single integrated system. This universality reduces the need for multiple separate devices, managing complexity through consolidation rather than proliferation of components.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges previously separate care functions (feeding, watering, medication, monitoring) into a single integrated mobile unit. By combining these functions, the system manages complexity through integration while providing comprehensive remote care capabilities.
Data Source
AI summary
A smart collar to be worn by an animal includes an imaging device configured to capture a plurality of images, and a microprocessor in communication with the imaging device to receive the plurality of captured images in real-time. The microprocessor is configured to perform at least one action selected from the group consisting of: analyze the plurality of captured images, compare the plurality of captured images with stored images, recognize at least one of a person, an animal, and an object depicted in at least one of the plurality of images, identify a behavior of the animal, issue a corrective action, issue an approving action, and issue an alert to a user.