(Reuters) – A South Korean start-up has developed an AI-powered dog collar that can detect five emotions in canines by controlling their barks using voice recognition technology.
The Petpuls collar can tell pet owners through a smartphone app if their dogs are happy, relaxed, anxious, angry or sad. It also monitors the physical activity and rest of the dogs.
“This device gives a dog a voice so humans can understand,” Andrew Gil, global marketing director at Petpuls Lab, told Reuters.
The company began collecting different types of barks to analyze dogs ’emotions in 2017. Three years later, they developed a proprietary algorithm based on a database of more than 10,000 samples of 50 dog breeds.
“I thought I was happy when I was playing and I felt sad and anxious when I wasn’t home … she actually felt angry when she lost a game she played with me, how humans feel,” Moon Sae- me, who has a six-year-old Border Collie.
The neck has an average accuracy rate of 90% emotional recognition, according to Seoul National University, which tested the device that the company says is the first of its kind to work with AI voice recognition technology.
Petpuls Lab began marketing the necklace online in October last year for $ 99.
The global pet care market was worth $ 138 billion by 2020, up 34%, according to Euromonitor data, as more people spent time at home with their pets or were adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. . The world population of dogs also grew by 18% the same year to 489 million.
“More people started adopting dogs, but unfortunately some abandoned their dogs due to poor communication,” Gil said. “Petpuls can play an important role in the pandemic … it helps owners understand how dogs feel and increases their union.”
Minwoo Park and Daewoung Kim Reports; Edited by Jacqueline Wong