South Korea has a smart collar that can translate your pet dog’s bark

Just when you thought your doggo’s “woofs” and “awoos” would forever be Greek to you, a South Korean startup has developed a smart dog collar that can give your pet its own voice.

Enter the Petplus collar—a neckband with an AI-powered device that analyzes the tone and pitch of your dog’s bark to track its mood.

Launched in October last year, the device identifies if your canine is happy, relaxed, nervous, angry, or sad on a mobile app synced to the collar via WiFi.

"This device gives a dog a voice so that humans can understand," Andrew Gil, Petpuls Lab’s director of global marketing, told Reuters.

"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,” he 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 device can stay connected to your phone within a 5-meter distance. If you would go father than that, the phone will pair back with the collar when you come in range.

Its algorithm was developed by Petpuls Lab back in 2017 through a database with over 10,000 samples from 50 breeds of dogs. Seoul National University tested the collar’s accuracy and said that it’s 90 percent on target.

The collar is sold on the Petpuls website for $99 or P4,760.

Moon Sae-mi, a fur parent with a six-year-old Border Collie attested to the device’s functionality.

"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," she said.

Gil told Reuters that they hope the collar would “help pet owners understand how dogs feel and increase their bonding” especially during the pandemic.

Photos from Petpuls on Instagram.