Wireless pet dog management systems

Abstract

Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted much scientific interests as a short-range radio network technique. The traditional sensor system was implemented as one independent device, which only delivers a measured value from the monitoring object without interconnection. The wireless sensor network collects data and delivers to corresponding management control systems for the user. Because of advances in micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, low energy utilisation and low cost digital signal processors using wireless communication have resulted into a new networked embedded system. It can be applied to measure, process and communicate with each sensor node over wireless communication. A WSN can support an intelligent operation and smart environments using many WSN nodes. A WSN node consists of a sensor and a shortrange radio communication module, and it can detect and deliver local conditions such as temperature, sound, light, or the movements of objects. Therefore, there are wide ranges of applications envisioned for WSN. Military interests and applications such as enemy permeation perception and attack perception of the biological or chemical weapon have been studied (Nemeroff 2001). As a management of natural resources, WSNs have been applied for tracking or watching the precious animal (Kumagai 2004; Li 2004; Sikka 2004), the water containment monitoring, forest fire or flood watch (Lorincz 2004). For a health care system, WSNs have been applied for remote medical treatment system (Timmons 2004). In addition, WSNs have been applied to the home automation and industrial control fields such as the intelligent building, the factory and the nuclear plant (Tim 2005; Aakvaag 2005). By the explosive growth of indoor and outdoor wireless networks and network- enabled devices has led to a potential breakthrough in ubiquitous computing possibilities for pet dog management. To the best knowledge of the authors, a wireless management system for pet dog using WSNs has not been reported on yet in the technical literature. Therefore, this research can be a useful reference data for designing and implementing an intelligent pet dog management system using WSNs. In this article, WSNs are applied to wireless management system for a pet dog. The implemented WSN system is composed of wireless sensing modules, a central control system, and additional devices such as mini guidance robot, automatic feeder and etc. Wireless sensor module is attached on the pet dog neck. It measures data such as the luminance, temperature, and sound, and transmits measured data to the central control system. A graphic user interface (GUI) module is introduced for user monitoring module, which displays measured data from wireless sensor part as graphic form. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.