This is an artificial intelligence (AI) dog collar which picks up the sound of your dog’s voice and in conjunction with your smart phone translates it into one of five emotional states: happy, anxious, angry, sad or relaxed. You’ll be able to tell the emotional state of your dog on your smart phone.
A South Korean company called Petpuls has devised the hardware and software. The software compares your dog’s bark with a database of more than 10,000 samples from 50 breeds in four different sizes from which they are able to deduce the animal’s “emotional well-being by day, week and month”.
As this software is based upon artificial intelligence it is able to learn and therefore becomes more accurate as the software accumulates your dog’s “voice data”. The objective is to allow dog owners to better understand their dog through their emotions. It’s a chance for dog owners to read their dog’s mind and communicate with them more accurately.
In addition, the collar serves as an activity tracker. It has a built-in sensor to calculate the calories your dog burns over a period of time.
The collar costs £73 in the UK and the app is downloaded to your phone. The device and software have been well received as it was a runner-up in the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest tech conference.
The conference opens on Monday and it normally attracts about 200,000 people to Las Vegas. This year because of the coronavirus pandemic it will be online for the first time in 54 years.
Comment: on the face of it this is an attractive technology because anything which improves the understanding of a dog’s emotions and the communication between dog and person must be advantageous to animal welfare. It seems to me to be a halfway step towards a Dr Doolittle state of affairs.
