We love animals! What would Youtube be without them? Just a bunch of videos of dudes getting smacked in the you know where with the you know what, if you what I’m saying. Dogs, in particular, are amazing creatures full of mirth and wonder. The best part about them? They can be trained. Dogs can be trained to do just about anything. As a matter of fact, they were trained to be dogs in the first place. Otherwise they’d just be wolves. However, it’s not the easiest thing in the wold to train each and every dog. Luckily wearable technology is here to make dog whispering just a little bit easier.
Melody Jackson, Thad Starner and Clint Zeagler from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed FIDO, a wearable computer for dogs that makes training easier than ever before. It works via a sensor that is worn on the animal’s vest that makes communication between a handler and said animal instantaneous. The handler can keep an eye on the dog, and on everything that has gone down, via an on-screen display. Basically this turns training a dog to do complex tasks into a cake walk. Although not literally because everybody knows dogs hate walking over cakes.
This is essentially for use in high-pressure canine scenarios like bomb sniffing and drug finding and, hopefully, bed bug discovering. We’ll let you know if this technology flips back around to the consumer sector. I’m still tying to get my dog to sit still for five seconds as I pour food in her bowl. We can’t all have Lassie, you know.
