About the Cat Tracker 2.0 Project
Your cat has a secret life…
Cats are mysterious, dangerous and far more unpredictable than one might expect from an animal that is, theoretically, domesticated. Some of the mysteries of cats relate to where they go and what they do; this is especially true of cats that go outdoors. We open our doors. They leave. Just where they go, we can’t be sure. Or rather we couldn’t be sure, until now. With your help, we’re investigating the movement and behavior of domesticated cats across the landscape. We want to know: Where do they go? Why do they do what they do?
Track Your Cat's
Tracking Your Cat’s Movement
Cat Tracker 2.0 is a similarly sized tracking device as before, but with much improved electronics that will collect higher resolution GPS data. We will use a GPS tracking unit to learn more about your cat’s movement.
Help Us Build the Cat Behavior AI With You Cat’s Acceleration Data
Cat Tracker 2.0 will also collect accelerometry data. We will be using the accelerometry data to characterize the behavior of the cats (use the slider on the left to see some examples!). To train these algorithms we also need to observe cats while they are wearing the tags, so we can exactly line up the data with the behavior.
Do you have a cat?
We are looking for participants to help with this research.
- Step 1
- Step 2
- Step 3
You will receive a small tracking collar to affix on your cat for seven days. The tag will be delivered to your home by a research personnel.
In the first 2 days, you will keep the tag turned off to test whether your cat is comfortable with the collar and get your cat used to the collar.
On day 3, you will turn the tag on, and we will come to video record your cat outdoors so that we can compare the behavior against the accelerometer data and annotate it to train the machine learning model. Then, we will show you a map of where your cat went!