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Look who’s talking -
Look who’s talking
WORDS Debbie Loots
Get inside the mind of your best poochy pal with the No More Woof headset. Made by the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery, it translates woofs to words and is sure to enchant VISI’s fellow dogue lovers.
You don’t need Dr Dolittle to tell what your dog is saying when he utters his one and only woof! Or try figure through the pitch of his bark, the look in his eye or the wiggle in his tail if he means: I’m hungry, beware, I’m bored or let’s play. This is all thanks to a nifty pooch headset developed by the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery that translates your canine friend’s thoughts into human language.
Called the No More Woof headset, it uses micro computing and EEG (the recording of electrical activity along the scalp) to convert dog language into English. So far the team are able to pick up, through reading the dog species’ unique electrical signal structure, whether he’s hungry, tired or excited about meeting a stranger. The team is also working on an idea to match various dogs with different voices. Plans for Mandarin, French and Spanish versions are also in the pipeline.
Although mammals share the same process of creating and transporting their so-called thoughts, the way each route is structured differs from species to species. The No More Woof team explains: “You could say that all creatures speak the same language only with varying dialects, but as animal brains are less complex than humans, their signal patterns are more distinct for feelings of anger, curiosity and tiredness.”
All this research means humans could soon have a kind of two-way conversation with their furry friends, making misunderstandings between at least two types of mammals a problem of the past.
Not sure if your pooch is up to all these new headgear tricks? Well now, there’s always Dr Dolittle.
