South Korean Startup Releases Dog Collar that Translates Canine Barks into Human Emotions

The AI-powered dog collar from Petpuls Lab uses voice recognition technology to let dog owners know if their pup is happy, relaxed, anxious, angry, or sad based on their barks

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A South Korean startup is working to strengthen the bond between dogs and pet parents through barks.

According to Reuters, Petpuls Lab has released an AI-powered dog collar that "can detect five emotions in canines by monitoring their barks using voice recognition technology."

The Petpuls collar is linked to a smartphone application that owners can download after purchasing the collar. The app lets pooch parents know if their canine is happy, relaxed, anxious, angry, or sad based on the barks analyzed by the collar.

"This device gives a dog a voice so that humans can understand," Andrew Gil, director of global marketing at Petpuls Lab, told Reuters about the collar, which can also measure your dog's physical activity.

Petpuls Lab created this collar by gathering and analyzing different dog barks for three years, collecting over 10,000 samples from 50 different breeds. This chorus of barks was used to develop an algorithm that can sort the emotion behind barks.

Seoul National University tested the device and found that Petpuls' algorithm is correct in determining a dog's state of mind roughly 90 percent of the time.

The collar first went on sale in October of 2020 for $99 and is available now via the startup's website. Petpuls hopes that this collar will help pet parents, especially those who adopted their first animal during the pandemic, form a deeper relationship with their pooches.

Petpuls' collar isn't the first invention to promise a better understanding of pet sounds. Last year, a former Amazon engineer released the app MeowTalk, which translates cat vocalizations into phrases that humans can understand.