Digital Dog Control

“Honey, have you seen the remote? No, not for the TV—the one for the dog!” Comical, but not far from reality. Sure, you can train your dog to do all sorts of things: You can tell it sit, lie down, shake and perform many other acts. A well-trained dog will listen to the voice of its master. But what if it can’t hear you? High traffic or other noisy conditions may cause the best of dogs to no longer be obedient to commands. What fix has been developed?

Essentially, your dog wears a small harness that contains a GPS tracker, wireless radio and CPU. The device emits various tones, as well as patterns of vibrations. The dog is then trained to respond to these tones and vibrations.

Will it really work? Tests have shown that dogs respond to 7 of 8 commands delivered in this format. The device has multiple applications: While it would be useful in situations where volume is an issue and your dog can’t hear commands, it is also useful for when you can’t personally be with your dog. You can send commands remotely from anywhere and keep track of your pet with the GPS locator.

Other applications include emergency situations. If an animal needs to be sent in to assist someone who is visually impaired, for example, the dog can be given commands from the outside. Thus, a human doesn’t need to be introduced into a dangerous and potentially unstable environment to perform a rescue.

Applications for smaller animals are being considered as well, and projects are underway to create similar remote controls for smaller, sturdy creatures, such as turtles and cockroaches. Did you hear that, parents? Forget remote control cars, boats and planes—soon your kid is going to want a remote control cockroach.