(Reuters) – A South Korean startup has developed an AI-powered dog collar that can detect five emotions in canines by monitoring 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 people can understand,” Andrew Gil, global marketing director at Petpuls Lab, told Reuters.
The company began collecting different types of bark to analyze the emotions of dogs in 2017. Three years later, they developed their own algorithm based on a database of over 10,000 samples from 50 dog breeds.
“I thought she was happy when she played and she felt sad and anxious when I wasn’t home … she actually felt angry when she lost a game she played with me, like people feel,” Moon said. Sae-mi, who has had a Border Collie for six years.
The collar has an average accuracy rate of 90% of emotional recognition, according to Seoul National University, which tested the device that the company says is the first of its kind to be powered by AI voice recognition technology.
Petpuls Lab began selling the collar online in October last year for $ 99.
The global pet care market was worth $ 138 billion in 2020, up 34 percent, Euromonitor data showed, as more people spent time at home with pets or pets. adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The global population of dogs also increased by 18% in the same year to 489 million.
“More people have started adopting dogs, but unfortunately some of them have abandoned their dogs because of miscommunication,” Gil said. “Petpuls can play an important role in the pandemic … it helps owners understand how dogs feel and increases their connection.”
Reporting by Minwoo Park and Daewoung Kim; Editing by Jacqueline Wong