Thanks to a new technology, when you speak to your dog, he'll be able to do more than just bark back. The technology, which was created at Georgia Tech, uses a sensor activation system that produces speech when touched by the dog, according to a CNN report.
The dogs can “say anything we give [them] the ability to say,” said Associate Professor Melody Moore Jackson. Jackson works with training dogs in this new technology, including her Border Collie, Skye.
Skye and the other dogs in the program wear a vest with the activation technology that allows them to, for example, differentiate between toys. One touch produces the phrase, “that is the frisbee” and another, “that is the ball.” Touching one versus the other gives Skye the ability to describe what he sees.
This technology has great implications for service dogs and Jackson has worked with training her dogs using medical alert vets. In these cases, the dog is able to activate the phrase, “my owner needs assistance.”
“Any dog that's trainable would be able to do this kind of activation because they are based on things that dogs naturally do,” Jackson told CNN.
See Professor Jackson and her talking dog Skye in the video below:
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