The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is developing a smart pet collar to enable pet owners to track the location of their animals from a short and long distance.
The digital specialist arm of CSIRO, Data61, is undertaking the project which builds on earlier work from the CSIRO and Ceres Tag to develop smart ear tags for tracking livestock.
Senior Research Engineer with Data61, Phil Valencia said the solutions developed for the agriculture industry could have flow-on benefits for pet owners.
“Unlike similar products for pets, the prototype collar uses both Bluetooth and satellite communications rather than one or the other to track an animal’s movements in real-time,” Dr Valencia said.
“Updates are sent to the owner’s phone via an app whenever their pet wanders outside of a boundary they’ve established,” he said.
“The Companion Collar uses Data61’s EIP (Embedded Intelligence Platform) and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology to determine if the pet is nearby, automatically switching to satellite communications when the collar is outside of the home network.”
Dr Valencia said many devices only employed Bluetooth or WiFi-based tracking, which often involved a community of people sharing their location data with a service in order to report the tracking device.
“The other approach available on the market is a GPS-based tracker that requires a mobile plan,” he said.
“These devices are often expensive, rely on cellular coverage and use a large amount of power, requiring weekly, if not even more frequent, charging.”
Dr Valencia said the CSIRO’s Companion Collar only required monthly charging, depending on the amount of activity the animal performed.
“Other crucial information such as specific behaviours, out of the ordinary activity and data for health metrics will also be monitored by the Collar, with information being uploaded to the cloud and displayed on a smart phone app,” he said.
Chief Operating Officer at Ceres Tag, Lewis Frost said insights from the Companion Collar would lay the foundation for personalised pet treatment and medication.
