It would seem we are only steps away from communicating with dogs in their own language through a voice decoder. The Discovery Channel reports on the latest success:
In one experiment, the software correctly classified the barks in 43 percent of cases. “Fight” and “stranger” barks were the easiest to recognize, while “play” barks were more difficult. When matched against a human’s ability to do the same, the computer’s success was about the same.
Pet behavioral analysis? I guess 43 percent is not bad. Now if humans could just understand each other more than 40 percent of the time…
“In the average house you have about 10,000 different objects and right now you have maybe three objects connected to the net – phone, computer and perhaps a rabbit,” he said.
“But we think that more and more objects are going to be connected,” said Mr Kitten.
A rabbit connected to the net? That is Jean-Francois Kitten, a spokesman for Violet, talking about a Nabaztag wi-fi rabbit gadget that can interpret RFID chips. Put a chip in front of the rabbit and it will “read” aloud. For example a book for children, or maybe a recipe for a cook.
The big question, I suppose, is whether Mr. Kitten will be tracking rabbit behavior. Is there a privacy-enabled rabbit?