I know someone who injured their shoulder and needed reconstruction with metal implants. This person is a dog owner and, following his shoulder reconstruction he cannot really walk his dog anymore because: if the dog happened to “bolt” and jerked his shoulder, it could ruin his now $25,000 shoulder.
Another issue related to control of a dog that wants to “pull” or “run off” involves the people who are just taking a walk in the neighborhood. I see these people walking and sometimes they attempt to try their walk where they bring along their pet dog. This group includes women with children who really want to walk the dog, but they also have to contend with one little one in the stroller and the other little ones on their training bikes.
Again, the dog part is basically unworkable because its just too much to try to “fight” a dog on a leash, even on the side of a residential road, and yet also simultaneously have to keep up with kids.
SO… I wish to propose a new product, I named it Segdogway. The Segdogway is a motorized sort of autonomous robot. The purpose of this robot is that a pet dog could be attached by a leash to the Segdogway and this leash would control the dog’s movements and its location. The Segdogway device that would allow people to have their dog “walk along” with them and yet they would not have to be holding the leash that is connected to the dog.
The Segdogway would function so that it simultaneously monitored its position, the human’s position, and the dog’s position. The Segdogway would use onboard programming so that the Segdogway can acquire and continuously update position data that the Segdogway needs so it can perform its function. A motorized leash retractor would be placed in the center of the Segdogway. The Segdogway would have enough room and strength of locomotion and structural support so that the weights of weight lifting could be added to the Segdogway as needed to make the Segdogway have enough mass and “heft” that it would be able to control and hold a dog, even a rather big dog, if enough weights were added.
This weight provision is important. The Segdogway itself would not necessarily need to be a heavy device, however, dogs can really give a pull to a leash. It is surprising just how much force a dog can put on a leash. The effect of this “dog strength” is that the Segdogway needs brakes not only good and robust enough so that the Segdogway can resist the dog attempting to pull the Segdogway along, but the Segdogway absolutely must have a capacity that it can be made “heavy enough” that a dog would not be able force the Segdogway to move.
This includes that the dog would not be able to drag the Segdogway along even though the Segdogway had its brakes locked. I advise that the weight issue of the Segdogway be solved by addition of the weights of weight lifting because there are various sizes of dogs. With a little dog, the inherent weight of the Segdogway may be enough to control the motion of the dog.
With larger dogs, as they pull on the leash connecting them to the Segdogway, it is easily understood that these larger dogs could absolutely simply drag the Segdogway along even with locked wheels. However, if the Segdogway had a sufficiently robust frame, power supply, wheels and axles and brakes, then one could just keep adding weight lifting weights to the Segdogway until the Segdogway weighed enough that the dog would not be able to budge it, much less drag it along.
The owner of the Segdogway would put on a “belt” as part of using the Segdogway. This belt would have a 60 gighertz transceiver mounted in the front of the belt and another transceiver mounted in the back of the belt. The Segdogway would use on-board 60 Ghz transceivers to communicate with the two belt mounted transceivers, and, using distance measuring and trigonometry, the Segdogway could position itself so that it was always about 3-4 feet behind the person wearing the belt, and the Segdogway would move along at the same pace as the person wearing the belt.
The Segdogway would have visual and audio sensors and an Artificial Intelligence type processing capacity, so that if a car was approaching, the Segdogway would “reel in the dog leash” and get the dog out of the road. It would also reel in the dog if any persons or animals came close to the Segdogway.
The Segdogway would also have an option where it could be set so that the Segdogway would also reel in the dog if it sensed that the dog was barking or engaging in pulling too much on the Segdogway.
The net effect is my friend with the $25,000 shoulder could “hook” his dog onto his Segdogway and finally finally be able to take a “jog” or a “run” with his very good friend, his dog. And the dog wouldn’t be in any danger and so also would my friend not be worrying about “ripping his shoulder apart”, and finally … a family could all “gang” together and go for a group walk in the neighborhood with their best friend, their dog, without that walk turning into a mess….
One interesting other feature that could be added to the Segdogway is a gps functionality. This would allow the Segdogway to compare its present location with downloaded gps related mapping information. The Segdogway would then have an additional capability using its location and computing capacities to continuously monitor the position of the Segdogway so that it was both following along behind the person wearing the belt, but the Segdogway could also use mapping information to try to also make sure that the Segdogway was keeping itself located on the side of the road.
Another interesting feature of adding reliable gps capability to the Segdogway, or by just placing 4 permanently located 60 Ghz transceivers on the borders on one’s property, is that the Segdogway could be configured so that the dog could be “let out” and the Segdogway would simply follow the dog around on the property wherever the dog wanted to go, except the Segdogway would be continuously updating it position data with respect to the property and the Segdogway would not allow the dog to leave the property and in addition would not allow the dog to go to areas of the property that had been set as “off limits” for the dog. pg