It’s a known fact that dogs understand human language and emotion very easily. But do you want to understand what dogs say? Well, now you can. Researchers at the North Carolina University have developed a new technology that lets you communicate with your dogs.
The project, touted to be one of the most anticipated one is being carried out in collaboration with engineers of different departments that include computer science, electrical, computer engineering departments along with the support of the College of Veterinary Medicine. Together, they have developed a technology to enhance communication between humans and dogs.
“We are developing what we are referring to as a ‘smart harness’ and you can think of the ‘smart harness’ as a platform for two-way computer-mediated communication between dogs and handlers,” says Dr. David Roberts, an assistant professor of computer science.
“We’re using this technology to ask some very fundamental questions about the nature of the way that animals can perceive computer-mediated communications and the way they can interact with computers in order to send digital signals across wireless communication links to handlers,” Roberts says.
Dr. Alpert Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, reiterates that this technology lets people to bond closer with their dogs and also train them easily.
“Our dream is to give people the capability to train their dogs like professionals at home, so that the pets can be turned into working animals. For example, for search and rescue, when there’s a big disaster in an urban environment, hundreds of houses collapsed, and there’s only a certain number of trained dogs, so this would give us the capability to train more and more dogs for such purposes,” Bozkurt says.
