Tech to help animals ‘talk’

“What would the world be like if dogs could talk to us?” asks Melody Jackson, “and not just our pet dogs, but working dogs, police dogs, search and rescue dogs, medical alert dogs?” Jackson isn’t pitching an idea for the next Pixar movie—rather, she’s a computer scientist at Georgia Tech who’s developing innovative new ways for animals to communicate using technology.

Jackson believes that communication technologies can be developed specifically for different kinds of animals. According to Wired, she has already built special computerised vests for service dogs, “so that in an emergency they can find another human and pull a mechanical lever on the vest that triggers an audio message: My handler needs you to come with me!” Service dogs, according to Jackson, perform a range of sophisticated and complex tasks—from identifying explosives by scent to guiding deaf people to the source of a sound — but are unable to communicate the full range of their knowledge. So, Jackson wants to give the dogs a way to communicate more nuanced information—like explosive types and danger levels—with special wearable electronics. It makes sense that much of the initial research in animal-computer interaction has focused on dogs — they’re social animals with a level of language understanding.

But, according to Wired, researchers are also developing systems that will help humans communicate with dolphins, sensors that monitor the well-being of animals, and even cat-human video games.