Advances in Internet of Things, 2013, 3, 1-8

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ait.2013.31001 Published Online January 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ait)

The Study and Application of the IoT in Pet Systems

Chung-Ming Own1, Haw-Yun Shin2, Chen-Ya Teng3
1
Department of Computer and Communication Engineering, St. John’s University, New Taipei City, Chinese Taipei
2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung City, Chinese Taipei
3
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Chinese Taipei
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Received November 20, 2012; revised December 25, 2012; accepted January 8, 2013

ABSTRACT
The interaction between human and physical devices and devices in the real world is gaining more attention, and re-
quires a natural and intuitive methodology to employ. According to this idea and living well, life has been a growing
demand. Thus, how to raise pets in an easy way has been the main issue recently. This study examines the ability of
computation, communication, and control technologies to improve human interaction with pets by the technology of the
Internet of Things. This work addresses the improvement through the pet application of the ability of location-aware-
ness, and to help the pet owners raise their pet on the activity and eating control easily. Extensive experiment results
demonstrate that our proposed system performs significantly help on the kidney disease and reduce the symptoms. Our
study not only presents the key improvement of the pet monitor system involved in the ideas of the Internet of Things,
but also meets the demands of pet owners, who are out for works without any trouble.

Keywords: Internet of Things; Wireless Sensor Network; Pet System

1. Introduction various prototypes to explore novel ways for human

computer interaction to realize the appliance of IoT. For
Over the past half century, computers have exponentially
example, they make some prototypes to demo the con-
increased in processing power and simultaneously de-
text-aware kitchen utilities, included an instrumented
creased in both size and price. This rapid change indi-
cutting board, vision and sound-based activity detection
cates that computers participate in more daily activities
in society. Computers are becoming smaller and cheaper, system, activity recognition using body-worn sensors,
and the single-purpose computers with embedded sensors and a sensor-augmented knife net gets to infer the con-
are practical from both economical and theoretical view- text and activities occurring in the kitchen. In addition,
points. Wireless sensor networks have attracted increas- the intelligent environment can learn, recognize, and use
ing attention and play a vital role in connecting every- behavior to provide a variety of novel services to house-
thing in our lives. hold members. Besides, the authors used policy-aware
Today users are more and more immersed into a com- object design to develop health and safety-aware smart
plex ubiquitous information. To capture handy informa- objects as an appliance of IoT, which acts as a smart
tion, make use of context information and interact di- barrel with embedded storage rules for various chemicals.
rectly with the physical object is the main request in our Depending on temperature, vibration, and barrels’ rela-
modern world with the mobile client. That’s the main tive proximity, it informs workers about safety violations
issue of the internet of things (IoT). The IoT provides a and prompts them to take appropriate action [5]. Hence,
set of standards and methodologies to associate object in by embedding computational capability’s sin all kinds of
the real world. There are several approaches for the pro- objects and living objects, IoT will be possible to provide
vision of applications that make such interactions as pos- a qualitative and quantitative leap in several sectors:
sible [1,2]. In 2000, the term IoT appears to have been healthcare, logistics, education, entertainment, and so on.
coined by a member of the RFID developer, who referred In fact, one of the most import elements in the IoT is
as the discovering tag information corresponds to a par- wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and the extension of
ticular RFID. Since that time, people have sized on the ubiquitous computing [6].
phrase “Internet of Things” to refer as the general con- WSNs consist of a large number of unattended, self-
nection of things, especially to those objects, that are organized microsensors, which are scattered in an area
readable, recognizable, locatable, addressable, and con- for a specific application. Each microsensor senses data
trollable via the Internet [3]. In [4], Kranz et al. developed from the environment, performs simple computations,

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2 C.-M. OWN ET AL.

and transmits the data over a wireless medium either di- and an aging population, increasingly more people regard
rectly to the command center or through a cluster gate- their pets as family members. This trend is reflected in
way. Although WSNs are similar to networks, they differ pet-related products and activities. For example, some
from networks for their energy constraints, markedly pet owners have started bringing their pets with them
larger density of sensor nodes, lower cost, and precise while traveling. A report from the 2010 Asia Pacific Pet
design for information-gathering [7]. The current trend is Economic Conference mentioned that the pet industry
to move away from proprietary standard to embrace IP- has grown considerably in recent years [11]. They fore-
based sensor networks using the 6LoWPAN/IPv6. This casted that the market would double in the following two
allows the peer connectivity between WSNs and Internet, years. Families in Taiwan raised 1,630,000 dogs than in
which is enabling smart objects to participate to the IoT. 1999. The family average has 1.55% dogs in 2007. Con-
This integrated factor plays a significant role in our versely, only 195,000 cats were in families in 2001, and
study. the total increased to 281,000 in 2006 [9]. This is an in-
Because of the low birth rate in Taiwan, researchers crease of 4.4% per family, and we concluded the average
should focus more on the rapid changes in lifestyle. family has 1.6% cats. According to a report of the coun-
Some studies indicate that when people go to a park on cil for economic planning and development, more than
the weekend, more of them are walking dogs than carry- 166,000 babies were born in Taiwan in 2009, represent-
ing babies. According to a June 2006 report from Pet ing a drop of more than 20,000 from the previous year
Care Services in the United States, America’s pet care [9]. Thus, Taiwan’s birthrate has dropped to the world’s
service generated approximately 363 million USD in lowest at 8.29%, with only under one baby born per
revenue in 2005. The annual growth rate of this service woman over a lifetime. The average family has more pets
should reach 6% in the future [8]. In addition, Eastern than children. This means that the demand for pet prod-
Europe and Asia will become potential markets for pet ucts will grow quickly, and household spending on pets
services. Meadows and Flint indicated that a low birth will exceed that for children. The pet industry and pet
rate and weakening links between family members have owners have gradually begun to realize the demand for
increased the importance of pets [9], leading to a corre- automated raising devices.
sponding rise in pet services. Pet doors are one of the most common products in the
This study attempts to improve pet appliances with the market, and various types of pet doors are available for
ability of location-awareness, and to help pet owners cats and dogs. Pet doors can be fitted in a lower portion
raise their pets easily. Although numerous automatic pet of a wall or an existing full-sized door. A pet door may
monitoring systems exist, such as automatic pet doors consist simply of a flap hung from a horizontal axis. This
and pet feeders, these systems cannot meet the needs of flap swings open, against the force of gravity, when
pet owners. For example, most pet care systems are pushed by an animal. A simple latch may hold the door
based on infrared detector/recognition, which can be in a closed position to prevent the movement of the door
used to spot pets at the door, register their movements, in either direction. The problem with this simple con-
and alert owners when pets enter areas where they are struction is that any animal small enough to fit through
not allowed. This infrared detector design has some dis- the opening may gain entry or egress, depending on the
advantages because infrared detectors can be influenced position of the latch. To prevent passage of unwanted
easily by various factors. The detection cannot be cor- stray animals, electronic pet doors have been designed
rectly recognized. According to the author’s previous with magnetically operable latches. In this type of design,
study, own has built a prototype of the pet system with any magnetic tag of adequate field strength can unlock
the cyber-physical-system idea [10]. Herein, the author the latch.
implements the system with the IoT infrastructure and Pets face many of the same problems as humans, such
applied the case study on cat raising. as obesity, diabetes, and stomach problems. Automated
Accordingly, the organization of this paper is as fol- feeding machines can provide for the care of such pets.
lows. A brief review of pet products and WSN platforms Several automated pet feeders on the market are capable
are given in Section 2. The proposed system modeling is of dispensing kibbles, and some are capable of feeding
presented in Section 3 while the experiment and analy- canned food. Feeding kibbles prevent food spoilage,
sisare discussed in Section 4. Finally, the conclusion is whereas feeding canned food does. Canned food cannot
presented in Section 5. be left in a device for prolonged periods because it spoils.
Besides, pets also tend to be restless when owners are not
2. Preliminaries at home, and they become hyperactive when owners re-
turn. It is occasionally necessary for pet owners to rein-
2.1. Pet Care Solution
force pet behavior by providing food for certain behav-
As Taiwanese society continues to have a low birth rate iors they may want the pet to perform. Automated feed-

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 C.-M. OWN ET AL. 3

ing machines is just invented for pet owners demand. cations also involve creating new business models and
There are many automatic pet feeders for feeding pets very interesting business initiatives in terms of innova-
at predetermined times during an owner’s absence. This tion. The main purpose of the IoT application layer is to
type of pet feeder comprises a base, a feeding bowl with provide the information services, and it mainly consisted
pie-shaped divisions, a timer module, a bowl cover, and a of three parts, IoT client side, data storage module and
locking mechanism to hold the entire unit in place. The data inquiry module.
timer provides programmed feeding schedules that de- In our study, we follow the IoT architecture to con-
termine the time the bowl cover closes or opens. This struct our pet monitor system. The hardware of the first
programming can be achieved through the timer interface part is based on the WSNs. These sensor nodes are vary-
or RF and IR remote controllers. ing in size and depend on the size because different sizes
of sensor nodes work efficiently in different fields. In the
2.2. The Technology and Architecture of IoT present era, there are many technologies which use for
monitoring are completely based on the wireless sensor
The “things” in the IoT not only be referred as “con-
networking. Some of the important applications are en-
nected together”, but also can be realized the functions of
vironmental monitoring, traffic control application, wea-
recognition, localization, tracing, management and so on.
ther checking, and regularity checking of temperature
IoT requires all things must can be identified. Generally,
[13]. Wireless sensor networks can also use for detecting
the RFID technology is the “speaking technology” for
the presence of vehicles such as motor cycles up to trains.
these things on IoT. The RFID technology possessed an
In our system, the pet wears the collar with sensor tag as
outstanding status in the IoT technology. A typical RFID
an identification. Figure 1 is the example of collar de-
system consists of RFID tag, reader and the application.
sign. Our proposed system can organize as the first pet
An agreement from code data preserved in the RFID tag,
monitoring system based on the WSN.
it can mark objects uniquely. However, without the bat-
Besides, the system infrastructure of the second part is
tery support, the serious disadvantage is the short com-
designed to meet the needs of the pet owner. General
munication distance of the passive HF RFID tag. Thus, in
speaking, home is small and pet sets are messy, WSN is
our study, for the purpose to extend the communication
the best choice to build the network structure. Thus, the
distance, we used the sensor network tags for instead.
system is open to the wider public; the pet owner can
To describe the IoT with a technical perspective, the
connect to the gateway at home to control/schedule the
relative study derived the IoT with three parts in the 2011
pet activity. Furthermore, in the final part, our system
[12]. The first part is the hardware device layer or the
supports the following services, the first one is the smart
sensing layer. This physical layer occupies less space,
pet door, the pet owner can restrict the pet activity from
making it easier to connect practically anything, any-
the outdoor to indoor. The second service is the smart pet
where, anytime. The technology of WSN is an outstand-
feeder, with this system help, the pet owner can schedule
ing advantage of the IoT in this layer, not only can gain
the open time of the eating bowl remotely. Thus, the pet
objects’ environment information, but can also distin-
can eat food on the health and efficiency control.
guish each object precisely.
The Second part is the infrastructure or the network
layer. This layer consists of converged network formed
3. The Proposed Pet System
by all kinds of communication network and internet. It In our study, the first device of the pet monitor system is
has been widely accepted that this part is the maturest the smart pet door, which can help the pet owner to con-
part. Besides, the IoT management center and informa-
tion center are the parts of network layer. That is, the
network layer not only has the ability of network opera-
tion, but also should improve the ability of information
operation. Besides, with millions of devices connected to
the Internet, 3G or LTE technology won’t be able to
work with. Although the 3G business is growing, the
capacity of the mobile networks is acting as a bottleneck.
Hence, to take advantage of these opportunities, the
WSNs must be open to the wider public.
The third and last part consists of the applications and
services that use the vast quantity of information created
by the IoT, it’s the application layer. The application
layer combined with industry expertise to achieve a
broad set of intelligent application solutions. This appli- Figure 1. The sensing tag on the collar.

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4 C.-M. OWN ET AL.

trol the pet activity. The other device is the smart pet lowing rules:
feeder. With the system help, the pet owner can schedule  The pet tag broadcasts the pet ID for every 20 seconds
the pet eating bowl time remotely, and make the eating continuously.
environment on the health and efficiency control.  An item identification can detect the animal seeking
passage through the pet door. Because the node of
3.1. The Smart Pet Door WSN is the active tag, the sensing range is about
from 1 m to 2 m. The pet door will unlock when the
Many families install a pet door for their pets. Pet doors
activity list is permitted.
are adapted to be fitted in the lower portion of a wall or
 The pet owner can set the different passage permis-
existing full-sized door. Pet doors allow family pets to
sion for the different pets. Thus the specific pet, for
pass the door easily. Figure 2(a) shows the system dia-
example, the sick pet, can be forbidden to go outside.
gram of the pet door. The pet door system consists of one
The passage permission will store in the control
control server, one smart pet door, several environment
server.
nodes, and the tag on collars. The pet wears a sensing tag  Aled light can indicate the pet owner where the pet is
on its collar, and the collar broadcasts the pet ID for located. In this case, the pet owner doesn’t need to
every 20 seconds continuously. Figure 1 shows the col- whistle the pet for making sure the location; the led
lar design. The pet door detects the pet’s location and indicator can show the pet location. This indicator
periodically requests the pet activity list from the server. costs less power, but can gain more conveniently.
Accordingly, when the device on the pet door receives  The environment nodes can report the weather to the
the broadcast packet from the pet tag, the device will server for every 10 minutes, the pet owner can set the
measure the estimated distance by the RSSI (Received weather rules to control the curfew. For example, if
Signal Strength Indicator) value between them, the mea- it’s raining outdoors, the pets must come home but
suring equation is listed as follows, get no permission to go outside.
RSSI   10n log10 d  A (1)  If there are more than one pets around the pet door,
the pet door will arrange the pet priority by their RSSI
In (1), n is signal propagation constant or exponent, d
values. Then check the activity list from the control
is the distance from sender and A is the received signal
server by their sequence.
strength at 1 meter distance [14].
Figure 3 shows the interior design of the smart pet
In this study, the proposed system is based on the fol-
door. The WSN module is installed on the upper right of
the pet door as the control and communication center,
which is responsible for receiving the pet id and driving
the control motors shown in Figure 3(a). Figures 3(b)
and (c) show the tow motors; the tow motors in Figure
3(b) is used to unlock the pet door, and the tow motor in
Figure 3(c) controls the swing direction of the flap. Fig-
ures 3(d) and (e) show the light motion sensors installed
on the top panel over the pet door. These sensors are
used to detect the flap swing direction, and the system
can use this data to trigger the LED at the top of the pet
(a) door, which can indicate the pet location to the pet owner.
For example, a red LED indicates that the pet is indoors,
whereas a green LED indicates that the pet is outdoors.
We compared the proposed system with the general
product of Staywell [15], as shown in Table 1, to iden-
tify the differences between these systems. Because the
Staywell product is based on magnetic tag sensing, the
cost and power supply is lower than those in our smart
pet door. However, according to previous discussions,
our system is designed based on the support of pet owner
demand. The power saving is another advantage of WSN.
Hence, our system exhibits dominance.
(b)
3.2. The Smart Pet Feeder
Figure 2. The diagram of pet system with (a) the smart pet
door; (b) the smart pet feeder. Most pets eat dry food. Pet owners cannot leave out wet

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 C.-M. OWN ET AL. 5

clean until the pet is ready to eat. This pet feeder also has
a bowl cover that opens and closes automatically. The
bowl cover is actuated by an infrared proximity sensor
and battery-operated electric motor. The sensor detects
the presence of the pet and then opens the cover, ena-
bling only the pet to have access to the food. When the
pet is out of sensor range, the bowl cover closes auto-
matically. This keeps dust, flies, and bugs from reaching
(a) (b) (c) the food and keeps the food fresh. The pet feeder system
consists of on control server, one smart pet feeder, and
the tag on collars.
In this study, our proposed smart pet feeder is based on
the following design rules:
 The pet tag broadcasts the pet ID for every 20 seconds
continuously.
 An item identification can detect the animal seeking
passage through the pet feeder. Because the node of
WSN is the active tag, the sensing range is about
(d) (e)
from 1 m to 2 m. The pet feeder will remove the bowl
Figure 3. The outlook of the pet door, (a), (b) and (c) show cover when the eating activity is permitted.
the tow motors, (d) and (e) are the light motion sensors.
 The pet owner can set the eating permission for one
pet to one feeder. Thus, only the granted pet can ap-
Table 1. The comparison between our proposed smart pet
door and the general product. proach the feeder for food. Besides, most of the pets
have deeply locality of animal behavior, share food is
Smart Pet Door General Pet Door [15] not common for them.
Cost Higher Lower  The pet owner can schedule eating time remotely, and
prevent the unwelcome insects by closing the bowl
Power Supply Higher Lower
cover in the non-eating time.
Pet Tag Sensor Tag Magnetic Tag  The pet owner can record the greeting voice to alert
Active Schedule Support No the eating time.
Remotely Control Support No  During the eating time, the pet is free to approach for
food.
Position Indicator Support No
 If there are more than one pets around the pet feeder,
Environment Control Support No the pet feeder will arrange the pet priority by their
Pet Identification Support No RSSI values. Then check the eating activity list from
the control server by their sequence.
food because it spoils in the time the pet must eat it. Dry Figure 4 shows the interior design of the smart pet
food feeders can keep dry food fresh to longer, and allow feeder. Figure 4(a) shows the feeder device. This study
the owner to feed a pet automatically, even when outside referred to the feeder product, which has four bowls.
the home. These feeders are nearly always placed on the Figure 4(a) also shows the embedded sound playback
floor next to an external wall where they are accessible to module, which is used to play the received playback
crawling insects, such as ants, which have a propensity to command from the WSN module. Figure 4(b) shows the
seek a supply of food. These insects not only contami- inside view of the smart pet feeder, in which the WSN
nate the pet food, but are often intolerable to the pet module can drive the rotation gear in the middle of the
owner. feeder to remove the bowl cover, and is also responsible
Numerous attempts have been made to design a pet for receiving the signal of pet id, checking the RSSI
feeder that resolves the problem of crawling insects. value, controlling the voice greeting, and triggering the
Most of these efforts have produced feeders with a mul- bowl cover to open or close.
tiplicity of discrete components. These feeders must be The difference between our proposed smart pet feeder
disassembled for cleaning and then reassembled before and the product from the Trading Company is shown in
further use. The pet feeder produced by the trading com- Table 2 [14]. As shown in Table 2, our smart pet feeder
pany has the general appearance of a conventional feeder, has a higher cost and larger power supply because of the
but has a moat-forming cavity surrounding the food bowl WSN module. Traditional feeders in the market do not
[16]. This pet feeder can keep the pet food and water support pet identity recognition, and do not require tags.

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6 C.-M. OWN ET AL.

kidney disease or kidney failure is the most common

medical problem experienced by older cats. Several cats
with kidney disease can survive for months or years after
diagnosis. However, kidney disease is not curable. The
disease is chronic and progressive, and results in fatality
in most cases.
The goal of treatment for kidney disease is to reduce
(a) (b) the symptoms and slow the progression of the disease.
Figure 4. The outlook of the pet feeder, (a) is the feeder The main forms of treatment are dietary change and fluid
device, (b) is the inside view of the feeder. therapy, and dry food is not recommended. A low-pro-
tein diet was previously recommended to help to reduce
Table 2. The comparison between our proposed smart pet the workload of the ailing kidneys. Thus, in the past, the
feeder and the general product.
old cat was isolated in a cage because of the distinct
Smart Pet Feeder
General Pet Feeder treatments for both cats. However, Mrs. Lee desired su-
[14]
perior treatment for her cats. Therefore, we installed our
Cost Higher Lower system in her apartment as a one-month experiment.
Power Supply Need Need Mrs. Lee previously installed a small pet door for her
Pet Tag Need No cats. We installed our smart pet door on the sliding door
to the balcony. Our smart pet door enabled the cats to go
Eating Schedule Full Functional Support Partly Support
to outdoors, and the activity schedule restricted the older
Bowl Cover Full Automatic Support Partly Support
Remotely Control Support No
Pet Identification Support No
Voice Greeting Support No

With the function of identity recognition, our proposed

system can fulfill the requirement of pet owners than
traditional products. For example, the comparison prod-
uct supports the setup of an eating schedule in the front
panel; however, it lacks the convenience of our system.
By contrast, our system enables the owner to set the eat-
ing schedule on web page remotely, which can help the (a)
pet to moderate its eating habits.

3.3. The Control Center

Figures 5(a) and (b) show the proposed management
system of the control service. Figure 5(a) is the Window
executed program, which can help the pet owner to exe-
cute on the PC. A php program can be remotely executed
on the mobile device for the pet owner convenience in
Figure 5(b). In our management system, the pet owner
can upload the pet image to the corresponding pet id.
Furthermore, the micro temperature (temperature and
humidity), pet activity permission, eating time schedule;
all the user defined data can be defined in this software
and stored at the control server.

4. Experiments and Analysis

Mrs. Lee, who lives in an apartment with a balcony in
(b)
Taipei, Taiwan, was applied as our experimental case.
She has two cats, one of which is young and energetic, Figure 5. (a) The System management for windows; (b) The
and the other is old and has kidney disease. Generally, system management program for web.

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 C.-M. OWN ET AL. 7

100 8

80 7

70 6

60
5

50
4
40
3
30
2
20

1
10

0 0
Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day Day
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Young Cat (Eating Time) Old Cat (Eating Time) Young Cat (Numbers of in/Out) Old Cat (Numbers of in/Out)

Figure 6. The experiment of two cats in the Mrs. Lee apartment.

cat from remaining on the balcony for long periods. Our pet feeder. The results not only present the key im-
system provided two smart pet feeders for both cats, provement of the pet monitor system involved in the IoT
which supplied them with different meals at each feeding technology, but also meet the demand of pet owners.
time. We record the eating time for each cat as the illness The basic vision behind the IoT, it may have a new
tracking. The cats wore different pet tags for identity way of operational method, it may have a new method of
recognition. connecting devices, and there might be the even com-
Figure 6 shows the experimental results of the two plete clean-slate approach. As the full operational defini-
cats in Mrs. Lee’s apartment. With the help of the smart tion is not yet finalized, there are numerous research is-
pet care system, we collected in and out numbers of the sues that can be worked on. As a next step, we will fully
apartment and the eating times of the two meals for both integrate the other pet care devices into our system, in-
cats. Because the old cat had kidney disease and was cluding litter boxes, pet cam, etc. With that, the diverse
restricted to the balcony at night, the number of ins/outs needs of the owners can be met, and the health, monitor,
was lower than those of the young cat (The average ins and entertainment topics for pets are all covered. Besides,
and outs were 4.6 per day for the young cat, and the av- standing as the cloud term, how to connect the numerous
erage number was 2.2 for the old cat). The prescription networking devices around the globe is the next issue. In
food for the old cat was not as appealing as the normal the future, we will centralize on the study of the IoT
food; therefore, the eating time was longer (The average
gateway and long distance detection of the pets.
eating time was 10.8 minutes per day for the young cat,
and the eating time of the old cat was 15.5 minutes per
6. Acknowledgements
day).
The author thanks the National Science Council of the
5. Conclusions and Future Work Republic of China, Taiwan for partially supporting this
research under Contract No. NSC 101-2221-E-129-014.
The interaction between humans and physical devices
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