Makers of smart collars aim for wider reach

Over the past decade, wearable technology has become big business – first for humans and now for pets too.

Fortune Business Insights valued the global pet wearables market last year at $3.7 billion (€3.4B), a figure forecast to nearly triple in the next 7 years, hitting $10.4 billion (€9.6B) by 2032.

Futuristic vision

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, 2 companies were pitching upcoming smart collars to try and get a slice of this pie – Traini and SATELLAI – and both lean heavily on artificial intelligence (AI).

Traini aims to do something that sounds like it’s straight out of science fiction: to offer a real-time translation of dog moods. This uses a combination of bark analysis and vital sign tracking via sensors on the collar itself.

“Right now we are building a cutting-edge supervisor model that can translate dog behavior into human language,” Arvin Sun, co-founder and CEO of Traini tells PETS International.

“It’s hard to understand exactly what the dog’s expression [means], right? So once we can make it happen, I think it’s not hard for us to sell the products.”

The smart collar, planned to launch this spring, builds on the Traini-Dog iPhone app, which already has 500,000 downloads.

Sun says it currently supports 120 breeds – a figure which will rise to over 200 by the summer – and the accompanying collar will have a battery that lasts for a week between charges.

Sun is already thinking about a possible second generation that will use the sensors in the collar for much more than just emotional analysis. “Along this path in the near future we can extend into health monitoring,” he says.

All-in-one monitoring

SATELLAI, meanwhile, already sees health as one of the potential benefits of its upcoming smart collar, due to be released later this year. “We’re putting a lot of demanded features in the market into one device,” says David Teaster, Product Marketing Director at SATELLAI.

That means the collar should feature virtual fencing, location tracking, activity monitoring and health tracking, while still only needing charging every 5 to 7 days.

“We’ve got activity monitoring, which eventually we plan to level up into health monitoring, where it can give specific insights into all the details about your dog, the respiration and stuff like that,” Teaster explains.

“But I think, initially, the early version is still probably going to be [focused on] just how active your dog is and how much rest your dog is getting.”

Size issues

AI plays a part too. Teaster says: “We’re integrating AI consulting so that you can ask questions with a chatbot about dogs. Initially, it’ll probably be mostly based on breed characteristics, but as the database builds out, we’ll be able to have more specific and detailed consulting in that regard.”

One problem that smart collars sometimes run into is physical size, mainly due to the fact that they need 2 types of transmitters, one for long-term evolution (LTE) and one for satellite signals.

All these sensors, and a battery with enough capacity to power them, take up space. For that reason, SATELLAI’s debut product will be for larger dogs only: those with neck sizes of around 33-76 cm.

Like Sun, Teaster is already considering future products and possibly an entire smart ecosystem for dogs. An activity-tracking collar could link to a smart dog feeder that measures how much food is eaten, for example. That could, in turn, help guide nutrition and health recommendations.

Retailer reluctance

These innovative dog collars offer different focuses that could be just the thing to push the industry to meet the potential it shows in the Fortune Business Insights forecast. Yet it may not be quite that simple.

Current smart collars tend to be sold directly by the manufacturers or via their Amazon storefronts.

Traditional pet stores – both online and bricks and mortar – appear less interested, with virtual and real-world shelves overwhelmingly stocked with mostly traditional tech-free collars.

That includes 2 of the largest pet store chains in Europe, both of which declined to comment on their reasoning when approached by PETS International.

Price sensitivity

One possible reason for this lack of interest is price. No recommended retail price had been decided by SATELLAI at the time of writing, while Sun has speculated that Traini’s debut collar would go on sale for over $500 (€460).

The pricing obstacle might not be insurmountable. After all, expensive phones, smartwatches and fitness trackers for humans were once also absent from supermarket shelves, but after they reached a sales tipping point, retailers followed. It remains to be seen whether smart collars are on a similar trajectory.