Dogs Can Understand Haptic Communication

Dogs are extremely common in the modern world, as pets or to help us as work animals. Despite their increasing popularity in both forms, our methods of communicating with them have not advanced much since their domestication. For even the most extensively trained working dogs, we rely on audial and visual cues to convey commands. In this work, we show that dogs can understand haptic cues. A vest embedded with vibration motors was designed to be worn by a dog. We trained a dog to associate four different types of vibrations with different commands, with good results. The dog successfully distinguished between vibrations, differing either in location or vibration type. Haptic communication can be used with working dogs or pets remotely, even in very noisy environments. It could also be used to communicate with deaf dogs, or facilitate communication between a pet and its speech-impaired owner.