- An AI-powered collar that can detect a dog’s emotion was recently launched by a South Korean startup
- Through a smartphone, pet owners would know if their dogs are happy, relaxed, anxious, angry, or sad
- According to the Seoul National University, the AI-powered collar has a 90% average accuracy rate of emotional recognition
Wouldn’t it be amazing if you are able to understand your pet dog’s bark to know their emotions and to better communicate with them? Perhaps it is one of the biggest dreams of fur parents — to be able to understand their pet’s “woofs” and “aws.”
This is probably why a South Korean startup developed and recently launched an AI (artificial intelligence)-powered device that could analyze the tone and pitch of a dog’s bark to track its emotions.
The Petpuls collar, created by Petpuls Lab, was launched last October. It is a collar that could identify a dog’s bark and tell its owner if their dogs are happy, relaxed, anxious, angry or sad through a smartphone app that is linked to the collar via Wi-Fi.
“This device gives a dog a voice so that humans can understand,” Andrew Gil, director of global marketing at Petpuls Lab, told Reuters. The collar can also track the physical activity and rest of a dog.
“When a dog barks, the dogs’ barking sound will be collected through this device and those voice files will be transferred to our main server,” Gil further explained. “Our Petpuls unique voice recognition system and algorithm will analyze a dog’s voice and then in real time, it will be sent back to application with different emotional status.”
The company started gathering various types of barks for analyzation back in 2017. After three years, they were able to come up with a proprietary algorithm based on a database of more than 10,000 bark samples from 50 breeds of dogs.
Since the collar is connected to the smartphone via Wi-Fi, it can only stay connected within a 5-meter distance. Petpuls Lab started marketing the AI-powered collar in October 2020 at a price of $99 or P4,760. The collar is available on the Petpuls website.
According to the Seoul National University who tested the device, it has the average accuracy rate of 90% for emotional recognition. Meanwhile, Petpuls Lab said the collar is first of its kind to be powered by AI voice recognition technology.
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