Animal companions are essential in the daily lives of many human beings. For elderly pets are often of enormous importance. They give joy in their life, keep them out of isolation and even provide a better health. But for many elderly keeping a pet is not possible. Most retirement homes do not allow animals.
Only when the significance of animals in the life of an elderly is recognized, we can understand the extent of the loss and the intensity of the grief that older people feel when they are forbidden to keep a pet. A pet may be the only family that an older person has, and when there is no more pet, there is no more family. There is no feeling of 'being needed'. There is no care to give. There is no love, no touch, no companionship, no one to talk to, and no one to feel important for.
It is proven that the physical contact of petting an animal is relaxing, and some studies have even shown that it leads to lower blood pressure in people with high blood pressure and lower cholesterol in people with high cholesterol levels. Pet owners in general, old and young, exhibit less overall health problems. Fewer problems with sleeping, less pains, headaches and digestive problems. For people in retirement homes, a visit from an animal also leads to the promotion of communication between residents, who otherwise would have nothing in common. This leads to an advantage of a permanent character, even if the visit is over. Pets always bring a smile.
For a global solution to this problem, we turned to the Mixed Reality Lab in Singapore. 
The Mixed Reality Lab, at the National University of Singapore, aims at the boundaries of research on interactive new media technologies to explore the combination of technology, art and creativity. They developed "Poultry Internet". Poultry Internet is a new physical interaction and a symbiotic system between humans and pets. It is an animal-human-computer interaction system that reproduces the human touch and transmits this onto the animal through a wearable jacket. This allows people to touch a pet, even when they're not in the same room. Simultaneously, it will allow people to see the prevents physical reaction of the animal through a stuffed animal that imitates the movements of the pet.
The goal is to increase the sense of physical existence between humans and pets. This project provides a new method of human-animal communication at long distance. It allows humans and animals the opportunity to have contact with each other, without in each area to be physical. Both humans and animals benefit from this revolution. This system was successfully tested on poultry, see the video below. Animal Life Foundation turned to Mixed Reality Lab to see if Poultry Internet could be modified and used on dogs, for example shelter dogs that are in desperate need of attention and touch. When combined with elderly people that are not allowed to have pets, we would create a win-win situation.
Mixed Reality Lab is currently working on a design.
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