Feedback From Chickens? Oh Yeah!

If you haven't heard of SIGCHI, you're not alone. It's just one of the dozens of special interest groups (SIGs) under the umbrella of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery -- the big brains who spend an awful lot of time thinking about the who, what, where, when, why and how of technology. SIGCHI is the group for the CHI (pronounced "kai," rhymes with "sky"), or Computer-Human Interaction community.

As esoteric as this may sound, CHI's work actually affects everyone who interacts with anything powered by a microchip -- that is, a pretty large chunk of the world, especially those of you reading this. CHI 2006, this year's annual conference, takes place in my home town of Montreal -- so over the next few days I'll be reporting on some of the presentations and discussions underway. That includes things like privacy, health and social issues. And sometimes, on the way to fascinating new areas, they can veer into the outright hilarious.

In fact, let's jump right in with the funny stuff. Out of everything I attended today, nothing garnered more attention and feedback than a little something called Poultry.Internet: A Remote Human-Pet Interaction System.

You read that right. Poultry.

Dr. Adrian David Cheok of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore opened his presentation by talking about how our increasingly busy schedules distance us from our pets. His team's solution? A haptic vest worn by the pet that can transmit feedback to a motorized dummy at a remote location. If the pet runs in a circle, the dummy runs in a circle. If you stroke the dummy, the pet feels your stroking through the haptic vest -- and its physical reaction is mimicked by the dummy. And in case you were wondering, the pets they've been using in their tests are indeed chickens. (The official Poultry.Internet website, complete with videos, is down as of this writing, but you can see a few more details in this press release.)

Dr. Cheok is perfectly aware of how funny this sounds, and his presentation was full of good humor. But at the same time, this is something he's been working on for years: I first encountered Poultry.Internet at the SIGGRAPH 2003 conference, and it's clear that there have been improvements. And despite all the laughter, more people lined up to ask questions than for any other presentation I saw.

Dr. Cheok cites several possible applications for this application of haptic technology, including first responders guiding dogs through areas too small for humans. But of course, that's all in the future. Right now, there's nobody here but us chickens.