High-tech harness lets you communicate with your dog

If you're a dog parent, you may spend a lot of time wondering what you're dog is actually thinking about. Imagine being able to really know what your furry friend is thinking!

The relationship between humans and dogs is unlike any other. In fact, we sometimes forget that our furry family members that share our lives, homes and often our beds with us are a totally different species from our own.

However, according to Stanley Coren, a behaviorist from the University of British Columbia, dogs have the same brain structures that produce emotions in humans. They have the same hormones and undergo the same chemical changes that humans do in emotional states. Dogs even have the hormone ocytocin, which in humans is involved with love and affection.

People have long dreamt of being able to talk with their furry best friends, and now scientists at North Carolina State University have come up with a new device that will allow humans to communicate with dogs in a new unique way.

N.C. State researchers have developed a number of technologies that can be used to enhance communication between dogs and humans, which have applications for everything from search and rescue to service dogs to training your pets.

Researchers and developer Dr. David Roberts, a professor at N.C. State, has created a high-tech dog harness that fits comfortably onto a dog, and is equipped with a variety of technologies that they say allows dogs and humans to communicate using a computer.

According to Popular Science magazine, Roberts said, "We're at the dawn of a new era here, where technology is going to connect us to our pets in ways we haven't seen before." Roberts is also the co-lead author of a paper written about the invention.

Roberts also said, "It's a communication platform that is designed specifically to provide two-way remote computer-mediated communication between handlers and their dogs."

The prototype harness, called the Cyber-Enhanced Working Dog, has sensors that collect and interpret dogs' behavioral signals, and humans are able to send them appropriate commands.

The small computer on the harness, called BeagleBone Black, monitors the dog's movement, emotional state, and outside environment. Information is wirelessly transmitted back to the handler, who can interpret it from a distance.

The sensors read the dog's heart rate and body temperature to determine his emotional state, such as if the dog is stressed.

And according to Roberts, they can start to characterize things like stress, distraction, or excitement and help handlers become more aware of what their dogs are doing and why.

Human commands are translated for the dog through speakers and vibrating motors on the harness. Roberts says dogs would be trained to respond to almost 100 different signals in the same way they respond to voice and hand commands.

One goal of the device is to help handlers identify and alleviate stress for the dogs, improving the length and quality of a dog's life. For instance, dogs often communicate non-verbally, and handlers of guide dogs, of course, can't see non-verbal communication.

"We have a fully functional prototype, but we'll be redefining the design as we explore more and more application for the platform," Roberts said.

Shortly after developing the harness, the North Carolina State researchers teamed up with the Smart Emergency Response System project, which aims to integrate high-tech systems with search-and-rescue efforts.

"You're never going to replace the human element of search and rescue," Roberts said. "What we're really trying to do is help these dogs be safer and more efficient in doing their jobs."

And, according to Roberts, these types of technologies that they've been working on will be commercially available in the not-too-distant future.

This sort of communication device could also be used to treat dogs with separation anxiety, to calm anxious puppies at shelters, and to help guide dogs enhance the everyday lives of their pet parents.