Budapest (Hungary) - The University of Budapest has finished a new study that concluded that it is possible for a computer to analyze and talk back to dogs based on six main kinds of barks.

The software used in the experiment was developed by the Sony Computer Science Laboratory and it looked at 14 Hungarian sheepdogs.  Researchers analyzed more than 6,000 barks and were able to classify each one into one of six categories.

The six different barks were called "stranger", a response to seeing a new person in the house, "fight", when the dog's owner encouraged the dog to bark, "walk", in preparation for an outside walk, "alone", when the dog was tied up with no one around, "ball", when the owner was holding a ball or other kind of toy, and "play", a bark used when the owner was playing a game with the dog.

The researchers said the accuracy and ability to distinguish between the different behavioral responses is about on par with their response rates of similar human studies.

"You could use this method to analyze other vocal signals, such as bird songs, or categorize video recordings," said University of Budapest ethologist Eotovos Lorand.

Researchers were able to use this data and in a second experiment correctly identified barks of 52% of a new group of dogs.  The group's next project is to analyze the barks of "working dogs", like sheep dogs and hunting dogs.

Summary

Feb 05, 2008 08:55     

Your summary for this article on the home page is wrong. It talks about a rapper comeback and the Wii.
Bob report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Still waiting...

Feb 05, 2008 09:03     

Interesting, but I'm still waiting for the "baby speech" analyzer à la Herb Simpson from the Simpsons.
Dan report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Woof!

Feb 05, 2008 09:21     

Bark bark bark woof bark rrrrrrrrruff!
Narg report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

A few more vocalizatiosn to go...

Feb 07, 2008 20:53     

I heard somewhere that dogs had up to 11 different vocalizations. Bark was just one, but some growls, whines, and other non-barking sounds leave room for additional interpretation. I'm curious how different breeds of dogs change these results. In my limited experience, my previous dog (a whippet/labrador/pit mix) would regularly vocalize and had a whine when he wanted to come in and growl when he was happy and wanted to play. Our new dog (rescue pup of unknown mixed canines) doesn't vocalize as much, but when he wants to play he's virtually silent and makes a shortened bark sound when he's ready to come inside.

9Nails report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0