Want To Know How Your Dog Is Feeling? This AI Collar Translates Barks Into Human Emotions

A South Korean startup has come up with a dog collared powered by AI which can tell five emotions in canines by monitoring their barks thanks to voice recognition technology, as per a Reuters report.

The Petpuls collar informs owners via a smartphone application if their dogs are happy, relaxed, anxious, angry or sad. This also keeps an eye on a dog's physical activity and the amount of rest it's getting.

¡°This device gives a dog a voice so that humans can understand,¡± said Andrew Gil, director of global marketing at Petpuls Lab.

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Idea started in 2017

It started to gather a variety of barks to analyse dogs¡¯ emotions in 2017. In 2020 they created an algorithm on the basis of a database of more than 10,000 samples from 50 breeds.

¡°I thought she was just happy when she played and felt sad and anxious when I wasn¡¯t home, actually she felt angry when she lost a game she played with me, like how humans feel,¡± said Moon Sae-mi who owns a Border Collie.

Reuters

There is a 90% average accuracy rate of emotional recognition, says Seoul National University. It tested the device and sees it as the very first dog collar to be powered by AI voice recognition technology.

Petpuls Lab started marketing onlin in 2020

Petpuls Lab started marketing it online in October 2020 at $99.

The global pet care market had a value of $138 billion in 2020, which was a 34% more than before according to Euromonitor data showed. More spent time at home with their pets or adopted pets during COVID. The global dog population also went up by 18% in 2020 to 489 million.

Reuters

¡°More people began to adopt dogs, but unfortunately some of them abandoned their dogs due to miscommunication,¡± Gil added.

¡°Petpuls can have an important role in the pandemic, it helps owners understand how dogs feel and increases their bonding,¡± he went on to say.