There’s a tale behind every wagging tail, or so believe the founders of New York tech company DogStar Life. They’ve created a wearable device called TailTalk that accurately translates dogs’ emotions by analyzing their ‘tail language’.
The company is currently trying to raise $100,000 through Indiegogo, in order to develop the technology further and also prepare for mass production. “The tail is the dog’s social interface, like a smile for humans,” the campaign page reads. “Understanding the tail means understanding the dog.”
The device is a lightweight sensor that is placed on a dog’s tail to capture movement patterns all day long. “It basically combines an accelerometer and a gyroscope much like the Fitbit, but it’s picking up on the way the tail is moving,” co-founder Mark Karp told Yahoo News. “The idea is to capitalize on all the research that’s been done in the last two to three years on what tail movement means, and translating that into emotion.”
