Robot Calms Dogs When Owners are Away

NEW YORK: A mobile robot has helped to reduce the amount of time a dog barks. Ziggy was recorded barking at a rate of 317 times an hour. However, when a mobile robot stepped in with behavioral cues and treats, the robot manufacturer WIM-Z says that rate dropped to 53. 

That 83% reduction is one of the first numbers released by WIM-Z, a New York-area startup developing a home robot designed to do more than watch pets while their owners are away. Instead, the machine listens to barking, identifies the behavior, asks the dog to perform a known calming behavior, and rewards the response. 

WIM-Z tested the system across six homes and one kennel in the New York metropolitan area between May and September. Its published field-trial results covers 50 sessions and about 60 hours of operation, during which its robots logged 2,169 barks and carried out 107 autonomous interventions. 

For owners, the idea is closer to an automated trainer than a roaming pet camera. One trial participant, Patty Gold, said Ziggy began responding to the machine better than she expected. Three households bought robots after their trials, while another two kept their units, according to WIM-Z.  

But these are still very early results. 

Each trial began with one passive baseline day before autonomous intervention sessions, and there was no separate control group or independent observer. More importantly, the headline bark-rate reductions come from only two dogs, one of them living with the company's founder.  

One trial also exposed where the robot did not work well. At a Jersey City kennel with more than 30 dogs, WIM-Z concluded that its single-dog system was not suitable for the group environment, reinforcing the company's focus on household use.  

The company says it has received its first paid preorders and sent one hand-built robot to an unnamed manufacturer in Shenzhen for production evaluation. Founder-batch units are priced at $799, with a $99 refundable deposit, but no shipping date has been announced.  

For now, WIM-Z has demonstrated something narrower but potentially interesting: in a handful of real homes, its robot could detect a barking dog, decide when to intervene and deliver a reward without someone manually triggering every interaction.