Ever wanted to know exactly what your pets get up to? Developers at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, may have the answer.
CSIRO’s Data61 – it’s digital specialist wing – announced today that it is developing a prototype smart pet collar that will enable pet owners to accurately track their location and movements.
While it’s primarily being developed for tracking of livestock across expanses of open grazing to monitor their activity and health, the Companion Collar will also be marketed to pet owners.
“The Companion Collar uses Data61’s EIP (Embedded Intelligence Platform) and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology to determine if the pet is nearby, automatically switching to satellite communications when the collar is outside of the home network,” said Dr Phil Valencia, Senior Research Engineer at CSIRO’s Data61.
“Many devices only employ Bluetooth or WiFi-based tracking, which often involve a community of people listening’ on their phones and sharing their location data with a service in order to report the tracking device. This method is also only suitable for short distance monitoring.”
She said updates are sent to the owner’s phone via an app whenever their pet wanders outside of a boundary they’ve established.
“Owners will get valuable insights into how their pet has behaved throughout the day, with the system identifying if the animal’s activity is above or below its typical levels, and whether it was significantly different at a certain time of day,” Dr Valencia said.
Pets who remain within the virtual boundry set up by their owner will trigger the device’s automatic power saving mode, but those who wander outside will cause it to switch to GPS location and direct satellite reporting.
Other crucial information such as specific behaviours, out of the ordinary activity and data for health metrics will also be monitored by the collar, with information being uploaded to the cloud and displayed on a smart phone app.
“Owners will get valuable insights into how their pet has behaved throughout the day, with the system identifying if the animal’s activity is above or below its typical levels, and whether it was significantly different at a certain time of day,” Dr Valencia said.
The product is being developed in collaboration with agtech company Ceres Tag.
Ceres Tag Chief Operating Officer, Lewis Frost said insights will lay the foundation for personalised pet treatment and medication, suggesting the collar will vastly improve the health and welfare of domestic pets.
“Ceres is leveraging all its learnings from the livestock smart tag development to create a superior product in the companion animal market utilising the skills of our very capable development team,” Mr Frost said.
