What’s your dog REALLY feeling? A Japanese startup shows off a wearable harness for dogs at CES that will show you whether they’re happy or sad by analyzing variations in their heart rate
- Inupathy has developed a new dog harness that analyzes heart rate variations
- It translates a dog’s heart rate into a color that correspons to an emotional state
- The harness will be available online in 2020, but no date or price is announced
A Japanese company called Inupathy demonstrated a harness at CES in Las Vegas this week, which shows dog owners color-coded signals that represent the specific emotional state of their beloved best friends.
The device is a padded clip-on harness that measures a dog’s heart rate and variations in the heart rate and is sensitive enough to take readings through thick fur.
Based on the heart rate variation analysis, an LED display built into the harness will change colors to show one of five emotional states that will make it easier for dog owners to understand their pets.
The Inupathy dog harness will measure heart rate variations on dogs of all sizes and with all thicknesses of fur
A blue light indicates a relaxed state, and a red light shows excitement.
Focus or concentration on an item like a treat, is indicated by white light.
General happiness triggers a rainbow colored display on the harness.
The harness syncs with a smartphone app that will let users track their dogs emotional state throughout the day, visualized as easy-to-understand clusters of colors, according to a report in Engadget.
The app will also feature a ‘Play mode’ that will suggest different games users can play with their dogs depending on their dog’s emotional state, including frisbee, treasure hunting, hide and seek, or agility games.
The harness was created by Japanese entrepreneur and engineer Jiji Yamaguchi after wondering about what his own pet corgi was feeling in his day-to-day life.
‘I wanted to know what makes him stressed and how I can make him more relaxed so I came up with the idea of visualizing the dog’s emotional state in real time through heart rate variation analysis,’ Yamaguchi said in a 2017 interview.
The harness will indicate your dog’s emotional state by emitting a particular color of light. White indicates focus or interest, red is excitement, blue is calm, and rainbow colors suggest happiness
The harness will sync with a smartphone app that will allow you to track your dog’s emotional state over the course of a full day
The app will also come with a ‘Play mode’ that will suggest specific kinds of games to play based on the specific mood of your dog
He settled on Inupathy as the company name because it combined his two overarching ideas of ‘insight’ and ‘empathy.’
Yamaguchi hopes the harness will make it easier for people from a variety of different backgrounds capable of understanding their dog’s internal states.
‘I want to change the relationship of dogs and humans once and forever,’ he said.
In a demo video from the company, one potentially useful scenario occurs when a young girl takes the family dog for a walk in the park and encounters another dog on a leash.
The two canines bark at each other and the harness lights up to show the girl that her dog is just excited and not angry and that it is safe to let the dogs play with each other.
There is no price or release date, but the company says the harnesses will be available sometime in 2020.