What if your dog could finally answer your constant troubled questions, or even just express why he's so obsessed with the flying stick?
Even though it sounds unreal and much like the storyline from the Pixar film, "Up," the reality is that your dog might just be able to start speaking back to you, Yahoo News reported.
A headset, being developed by Scandinavian scientists, will soon allow your furry best friend to speak his mind.
"No More Woof," a technology that aims to distinguish canine thought patterns and then issue them as short sentences via a microphone, is being developed by The Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery.
"The brainwaves differ quite a lot from different races as well as individual dogs," NSID wrote on their website. "However it is possible to detect some common patterns and we have no doubt that in the future this technology will open up a vast new era of communication between dogs and humans, or animals in general and humans."
According to Yahoo News, the research team, who previously brought the world such inventions as the pet flying carpet, weren't immediately available for comment on Wednesday, but explained the most recent project on their website.
"No More Woof is the result of combining the latest technologies in three different tech-areas - EEG (electroencephalography) sensoring, micro computing and special [brain-computer interface] software," the researchers wrote.
The headset detects electric signals in the dog's brainwaves and passes it onto the operating system. Then, technology from an in-built processing device analyses the signal patterns and deciphers them into distinct feelings like anger, curiosity or tiredness, Yahoo News reported.
Sample sentences such as "I'm hungry - but I don't like this!" or "I'm curious who that is?" will be programmed into the device and emitted through a loudspeaker.
Even though the English translated headsets will be the only ones available, language-headsets of Putonghua, French and Spanish will also be introduced later on, researchers said.
It hasn't yet been established how the sensors will be attached into the dog's brain. Before the technology becomes available, both ethical issues and social concerns will have to be looked at and dealt with, Yahoo News reported.
As part of the research funding campaign, three different versions of the headset are already available for pre-purchase on indiegogo. The price ranges from $65 for the micro to $300 for the standard version or $1,200 for the Superior customizable mini-speaker, replete with engraved dog tag.
Even though the prototypes will take some time to reach your mailboxes, the researchers said that the implications of the technology are enormous.
Apart from just the dog speaking to you, scientists are putting in their best efforts to develop headsets that will help the owner speak in a language that will be understood by the dog, Yahoo News reported.
To further the owner-pet bond through the use of play and classical conditioning, a "Pavlovian training kit," with original instructions by the physiologist Ivan Pavlov is one of the applications and accessories that researchers have in their far-sighted future developments, Yahoo News reported.
"Right now we are only scraping the surface of possibilities," the researchers wrote. "The first version will be quite rudimentary. But hey, the first computer was pretty crappy too."
