Motorized Smart Dog Tether with Dynamic Boundary Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing animal tether systems restrict animals to circular areas, leading to potential injuries and safety risks due to abrupt deceleration, limited space, and obstacles, while also violating regulations if left unattended.
Innovation Solution
A controllable animal tether system that actively manages the length and direction of the tether based on the animal's speed, direction, and angular position, allowing for a non-circular boundary and programmable exclusion zones, using a motorized reel with sensors and a controller to ensure safe and controlled movement.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a fixed-length tether is used to confine the animal, then the animal is restricted to a circular area, but this causes abrupt deceleration and potential injury when the animal reaches the perimeter
Solution Approach 1:
The tether length is made dynamically adjustable through a motorized reel system that can extend and retract the tether based on real-time monitoring of animal position, speed, and direction. This dynamic control replaces the fixed-length constraint, allowing the system to provide gradual deceleration by controlling the retraction rate and providing cushioning force through the spring mechanism, thereby eliminating abrupt stopping injuries while maintaining confinement reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
A spring mechanism is incorporated into the tether system to provide cushioning force before the animal reaches the perimeter limit. The spring stores energy as the tether extends and releases it to provide controlled deceleration, preventing abrupt stopping and potential injury. This beforehand cushioning mechanism ensures safe deceleration while maintaining the confinement function.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the tether length is shortened to avoid obstacles and injuries, then the confined area becomes smaller, but this reduces the roaming space for the animal
Solution Approach 1:
The tether length is dynamically adjusted based on real-time detection of obstacles and animal movement parameters. When obstacles are detected or when the animal approaches unsafe zones, the system automatically shortens the tether to prevent injury. When the path is clear, the tether extends to maximize roaming area. This dynamic adjustment allows the system to maintain large roaming space while avoiding obstacles and injuries.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates sensors to continuously monitor animal position, speed, direction, and environmental obstacles. This feedback information is processed by a controller that adjusts the tether length in real-time, extending it when safe to maximize roaming area and shortening it when obstacles or hazards are detected, thereby resolving the contradiction between safety and roaming space.
3Area of moving object
If a spring-return coil spool is used to allow variable length tether, then the animal can roam more freely, but the system lacks active control and still confines to circular area
Solution Approach 1:
The passive spring-return coil spool is replaced with an active motorized reel system that can dynamically control tether length based on real-time sensor feedback. This active control enables the system to create non-circular boundary shapes by differentially extending and retracting the tether on different sides, allowing the animal to roam freely within complex, adaptable boundary configurations rather than being restricted to simple circular areas.
Solution Approach 2:
Sensor arrays monitor animal position, speed, and environmental features, providing feedback to a controller that actively adjusts tether length to create desired boundary shapes. This feedback-controlled active adaptation allows the system to transform from fixed circular confinement to versatile, programmable boundary configurations that can accommodate various roaming freedom requirements.
4Adaptability or versatility
If the tether system includes motorized control and sensors, then active management of tether length and direction is achieved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The motorized reel system serves multiple functions: it extends and retracts the tether, provides braking force, delivers cushioning through spring integration, and responds to sensor feedback for obstacle avoidance and boundary control. By consolidating these diverse functions into a single multi-functional actuator system, the patent reduces overall device complexity while maintaining high adaptability and active control capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The motorized reel, spring mechanism, brake system, and sensor feedback loop are merged into an integrated control system. The motor provides both propulsion for tether extension and braking for controlled retraction, while the spring adds cushioning functionality. This merging of multiple subsystems into a unified architecture achieves active tether control with reduced complexity compared to separate independent systems.
Data Source
AI summary
An animal tether system and method wherein the rate of extension and retraction of the tether and/or the length of the tether can be actively controlled at least in part as a function of the angular direction and/or speed and/or length of which the tether extends/retracts. The system can be used to maintain an animal in a non-circular boundary, such as a rectangular space, by controlling how far the tether can extend at certain angular positions. The system also allows a user to block off certain areas within a space from access by the animal.