If I told you dogs can talk you probably wouldn’t believe me, at least not if your sane, but now thanks to some very clever chaps at Takara Tomy in Japan they can, sort of.
The Bowlingual Voice is a very cool piece of kit which analyzes your dog’s barks and translates them into real human words…. I personally think it’s amazing, Dr Doolittle eat your heart out. A basic model was released seven years ago selling 300,000 units in Japan alone and causing enough of a stir to demand a more technologically advanced evolved version.
Focussing mainly on six areas of emotion; joy, sadness frustration etc the collar unit worn by the dog detects sound and relays the information to a hand held device, which then in turn analyzes the sounds captured and synthesis a humanised output, in aural and visual form.
So although you’re not going to be entering any lively debates with next doors Labrador anytime soon. Dog owners will be able to view there dog’s in a whole new light.
The gadget may seem a little limiting. I imagine a good dog owner would have a good general idea of their pets’ emotion status rendering a computerised go between pretty useless. Bearing that in mind however I still like the intention of the Bowlingual voice even if it is a gimmick, the course of increasing communication between man and mans best friend is a worthy one. A lucrative one too regarding the size of the canine market place, a good product like this could do very well.
The bad news however is that for now the device is only for sale in Japan retailing at £129.