A slim cousin to larger bots from Boston Dynamics, the Spot Mini can steer around obstacles, walk up stairs and even gently unload wine glasses from your dishwasher, an incredible feat of precision and delicacy (not to mention neat at parties).

We always see gifs of clumsy robots breaking things, not knowing their own strength, but this little guy is a big step forward in safety and capability. This is incredibly important if machines of this type are designed to become part of our daily lives.

Spot’s backers ask you to “think of how delicate a robot will have to be in the future. For example, to give an older person who is very frail a shower. How do you carefully lift them, position them, make sure they’re safe in order to give them a shower and then dry them off, help them with their clothes? That’s a pretty sophisticated machine and it requires a bit of machine learning to get to that point.”

Boston Dynamics is currently owned by Google, but Toyota has its eye on the company. Whether the search giant or car company will get these into ordinary homes anytime soon remains to be seen, but if they do make consumer models, buyers can be sure at least this is one dog that can walk itself.

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Unbuckled dogs in automobiles can be a danger to your pet passenger as well as the driver and other riders, making this snug solution a good way to keep all parties involved safer on the road.  At just 30 miles per hour with a 10-pound dog, a fender bender can turn your pup into a projectile with 300 pounds of force.

One of a number of pet-friendly features offered by Czech automaker Skoda as part of a K9 package, this seat belt provides a snug harness to reduce dog-related distractions and keep pets in place during accidents as well (the device comes in four sizes to fit various weights and body shapes). Related offerings include pet grills as well as hammocks to help keep the back of your car cleaner when transporting canine companions.

Only a small percentage of drivers secure their pets during transit, but as Inhabitat notes: “There’s somewhere in the region of 70-80 million dogs residing in households around the U.S., and according to AAA, 56 percent of all dog owners drive with their pup at least once a month, accompanying owners on anything from a quick errand to a coast-to-coast road trip. But a phenomenal 84 percent of these rides are conducted with the dogs roaming free, and that’s a serious hazard for both dog and owner.”

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Soon, teaching your dog to ‘speak’ will be obsolete. They will be able to communicate verbally in English, Spanish, French and even Mandarin. They will wear EEG-style headgear. This is the vision of the Swedish research lab NSID and their post-apocalyptic dog translator No More Woof.

Okay, so the concept isn’t that stark, and it’s one that holds more ground than one would think. In fact, it started out as a kind of joke between NMW project director Tomas Mazetti and his brother. The two wondered what would happen if the consumer-level EEG Epoc was used on their mother’s dog. It was an idea that piqued enough curiosity for Mazetti to order one. Sure enough, brainwaves were produced. “It’s not that complicated,” Mazetti said in an interview with FastCoDesign. “If a dog is really calm, sleepy, or upset, that is extremely easy to see.”

Testing then began at NSID labs, where the EEG was hooked up to an inexpensive processor and portable speaker. It was developed enough for the team to start an Indigogo campaign. No More Woof is still purely in research phase, but a release date has been set for donors.

The post It’s a Dog Speak Dog World: Concept Reads Canine Minds first appeared on Gajitz.