Keeping a dog is one thing but being able to care for her the way she would want is entirely another. Pet-friendly tech innovations have made keeping track of your dog, feeding them at the right time, and even monitoring their health a little easier, but what if you could also know how your dog is feeling at a given point in time? Your communication and experience would become increasingly healthy – either way – and this is what PingPong intends to do!
Allowing the pet patent to “catch what they (dogs) feel, do what they want;” the PingPong is a communication and relationship enhancer that helps dog owners understand their pet’s behavior through their activities. Being a dog parent myself, I can say from personal experience that it’s really difficult – on many occasions – to figure out how your dog is feeling. Most dog owners would vouch for being able to understand feelings properly, but the fact is there’s more to a dog’s emotions than his wagging tail or cuddled-up sleep.
With the intention to give dog owners – new and old – not very sure of the right communication with the pets an option to use technology to their benefit. And then to be able to provide their pals exactly what they want. PingPong allows communication through expression between dogs and their owners. PingPong is a name derived through feelings of dogs captured through their expression as ‘ping’ and the activities carried out after understanding feelings as ‘pong’.
Comprising a dog collar smart tracker, a leash, charger and hub; PingPong can pick up five different dog feelings and represent the same in as many color notifications. These feelings include comfort, joy, stress, loneliness and fear. The color indications are displayed on the smart chip and leash handle. A yellow color ball bouncing high and fast displays joyfulness, blue ball bouncing rhythmically shows comfort, gray ball bouncing slowly is an indicator of loneliness in dogs, stress is shown by the red ball bouncing fast, while a fanatically bouncing purple ball is an indicator of fear!
The smart clip used on a dog collar picks up these emotions through the dog’s activities. It can measure the behavior and heart rate of the pet using onboard sensors and displays the five feelings on the app, leash or the chip itself for owners to see. The sensors can pick delicate emotional changes in the dog and the app can recommend activities that owners can undertake to match the feelings. There are daily, weekly and monthly activities recommended to the owners, to build a congenial environment/routine for the pals.
Designer: Soyoung Lee, Jaewan Choi, Wonjae Lee and Hanna Yoo
