Smart Collar Project – presented by Dr. Dave Roberts

Using devices pups wear, we capture data that can help us better predict success and help raisers to be more successful by understanding the environmental influences on success.

Using “smart collar” technology to collect data during puppy testing while puppies are being raised in a puppy raising program, artificial intelligence is then applied for predictive outcomes that can lead to cost savings for programs and production planning.

Dr. David L. Roberts received the B.A. in computer science and mathematics from Colgate University in 2003 and the Ph.D. in computer science from the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010. He is an Associate Professor of Computer Science, Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs, and Interim Director of the Digital Games Research center at North Carolina State University. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, social and behavioral psychology, and animal-computer interaction. He has a particular focus on computation as a tool to provide insight into human and nonhuman animal behavior in digital and real world environments. He received the Georgia Tech President’s Fellowship and Student Research Excellence Commendation, multiple IBM Faculty Awards, best paper awards and nominations at International Conferences including Interactive Digital Storytelling, SIGCHI, Robot and Human Communication, Computational Intelligence in Games, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He has also co-founded two startup companies commercializing nonhuman animal-computer interaction technologies, is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery. Dr. Roberts works collaboratively with faculty and students in other departments on the design of hardware, software, and analytics for measuring, characterizing, and predicting animal temperament and behavior.
Outside of his professional life, Dr. Roberts enjoys cooking and hiking as his main hobbies but can often be found doing a wide variety of things ranging from carpentry to meadow habitat restoration. He currently shares his life with his wife, two daughters, three dogs, and 14 chickens.