CES is a place where all the weird and wonderful tech is unleashed onto us. Some end up being hits and, well, some not so much. One obscure piece of tech that has us interested is the new AI-powered dog collar from PetPuls.
We have every possible version of wearable tech for humans so why not wearable tech for dogs? Ever since Reckless Kelly’s dog was able to say cornflakes we have all no doubt wanted to know what our dog was thinking and feeling. The PetPuls smart dog collar apparently allows just that — not the cornflakes but the other stuff.
The PetPuls smart collar is made up of a small device attached to a silicon collar and that’s it. The device connects to your smartphone via Wi-Fi to transfer the data that it collects into a readable format. It tethers to the pawrent’s smartphone while outdoors and syncs with the paired app once you are back on Wi-Fi.
The smart collar includes an accelerometer that tracks your dogs diet — I’m not entirely sure what step amount per day is expected for a dog and is one pace two steps because they have four legs? Pawrents of dogs can use this activity to better manage their dog’s diet based on the activity the dog performs each day.
The device also measures rest — sleep tracking for dogs? At the same time it measures barking amounts/time. This is where the PetPuls smart collar gets fancy.
It uses AI-powered voice recognition technology to detect and track five different emotional states of your dog. It analyses the tone and pitch of the dog’s bark (I’m not sure if it allows for the size of the dog as that often affects the barking pitch — I dare say it sets a baseline bark for your dog?). The analysis is based on a database of over 10,000 bark samples and over 50 breeds of dog.
This analysis leads to it being able to tell you if the dog is happy, anxious, angry, sad or relaxed. The app then tells you what your dog is trying say — fair bet they don’t have cornflakes in the database just yet. The collar improves its accuracy the more it is used (more data).
The PetPuls dog collar is IP65 water and dust resistant (rain but not bath-proof) and has a battery life of just 8-10 hours which is disappointing. You will have to charge it every night if you want to use it each day.
The PetPuls Smart Collar is available in small and large sizes for US$99 and US$108 respectively with additional straps in blue, green, hot pink, turquoise and orange available for US$20. Shipping to Australia is AU$22 if you are interested. Fitbit for man’s best friend — why not?
EFTM’s coverage of CES 2021 is supported by Hisense, Samsung and Powered by Telstra 5G.
