Valli plays with buttons

Making elephant buttons

Back to Skanda Vale this week to visit Valli and Brothers Stefan and Peter.  This time I took my homemade button hacks with me - made from pieces of drainpipe mounted on some wood.

The idea is that Valli will investigate the pipes and in doing so, approach capacitance sensors mounted at the base - these are made from tinfoil and plywood sandwiches and can be calibrated to act as inputs before they are actually touched.

As she approaches each button with her trunk tip, a different tone is produced.  Using a tiny piezo buzzer, it is not possible to generate the low and interesting sounds (didgeridoo) that we tested on our last visit.

Fritzing layout of device with Arduino microcontroller

First attempt - too small

The Skanda Vale elephant barn has some useful browsing holes, so we closed one and dismantled the original frame, then fixed the button system in place.  It was soon obvious that the 20cm pipe I had used was too small for Valli's trunk, so Brother Peter and I resolved to build a bigger version the following day.

We found some more wood and larger dimension pipe and made a simpler 2 button version for Valli to try.

Valli's trunk exploring the buttons

Brother Stefan coaxed Valli to probe the hole using a piece of banana at the end of the button, which meant that she obviously continued to search the buttons for more food treats.  This meant we couldn't show that she was interested in the sound being produced, but it gave us a good idea of the practicalities of future button production.

Valli takes a break from button pressing

Plans to try and make a shower control for Valli, so she can activate the shower by herself from inside her barn.

I'm hoping to make a family trip back to the Ashram at Easter to install shower controls.  The interesting part for me will be if we can offer her a range of different kinaesthetic experiences with the water and allow her to choose - squirt, spray, drip etc.  This will mean she will have to be able to differentiate between the buttons.

Blair Drummond Safari Park

Mondula heads outside

I went up to Stirling during half term week to meet Chris Hales, Head of Large Mammals, and Alistair Gillies, Chief Research Officer at Blair Drummond Safari Park.

Blair Drummond keep two African elephants, Mondula and Toto.  
We chatted about concepts for providing elephants with alternative enrichment, using technology to enable various systems.  I'm still keen to pursue acoustic stimulation, while Ally and Chris would like to offer control over different features in the environment, such as heat lamps and showers.

The inner walls of the barn have ready-made holes, designed for browsing.  This means that a system could potentially be mounted on the other side, so the elephants would need to reach through with their trunks to use controls.  This would be a good idea, as it would prevent them from using their full strength on the device.

Mondula at the fence

Chris showed me dents in a stainless steel bar 3m above the ground, caused by Mondula tusking.  He suggested that anything mounted inside the walls would have to be encased in a steel box to be elephant-proof!

Plans to follow up this visit with some concept sketches and suggestions for future research.

Designing smart toys for the cognitive enrichment of elephants

http://doc.gold.ac.uk/aisb50/AISB50-S14/AISB50-S14-French-extabst.pdf

Paper delivered at AISB 2014 (conference for The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour), ISAWEL (Symposium on Intelligent Systems for Animal Welfare)

track.

My co-authors were Clara Mancini, Neil Smith and Helen Sharp from The Open University.

Tanya playing in the mud, Colchester Zoo, Feb 2014