The most popular pets are generally considered to be dogs and cats, followed by freshwater fish, birds, and small animals such as hamsters, guinea pigs, and gerbils. A tech company developed the tools, cats and dogs need to “to tell us what they’re thinking.”
FluentPet, the company behind the new communication system for pets, promoted at CES its talking buttons, that you can train your pet to press when it needs something. Called “HexTiles” because of their hexagonal shape, the recordable plastic buttons can be connected to each other and are “designed to be flexible and accommodate learners big or small as well as learners new to buttons or experienced,” as the official website states.
“We find that actually when dogs kind of know that they’re being understood because they have the precision and specificity of the buttons, then they complain less because they’re no longer wondering whether they actually communicated what they wanted to,” said Leo Trottier, CEO at FluentPet.
The new buttons kits are connected to wi-fi and a mobile app that notifies the owner when the pet pressed a button. “There’s app notifications — you can get a ‘text’ message from your dog,” said Trottier.
The FluentPet starter kit that includes 6 Connect Buttons, 3 Compact HexTiles and 56 Ideogram Stickers and is available for pre-order at a price of $159,95, deliveries are set to start beginning February.
Another pet related innovation presented at CES last week is a robot dog, Dog-E that develops its personality as it is set-up and can be an alternative for a real pet. “I do think for anyone that’s either not ready to have a dog yet, this is a great test to take care of it, learn to feed it, nurture it, and really have that trial run for a family,” WowWee the company behind the robodog said.
Source: techcrunch.com
