Every dog is the best dog. No matter what dog they are, what breed they are, or how well they behave, they are all good dogs. But do you ever wish you could tell dogs how amazing they are, constantly? Fear not, as YouTuber Rider has the answer to cool down. Using a megaphone, a camera and a smart integrated machine-learning system, Nifty has created a device for technology and comedy commentator that urges dogs to walk the streets and admire them.
After all, they deserve it. Rider created the machine for “Dog Identifier” to make me feel better, “to increase his dopamine” and for his friend Heather, who appeared as a fan of the machine as man’s best friend. The creation began with a raspberry pie, a tiny computer that is popular among tinkers and programmers for its credit customization and cheap price.
With some programming skills, Raspberry Pi Rider will be able to run any algorithm at will. It involves a live streaming camera, the whole system then runs through a machine-learning model to detect a stray puppy. The hardest part of the system lies in the detection of dogs without any control by humans. To do this, the rider uses the YOLOv3 object detection model. Like many other machine learning models, YOLOv3 is a software developer’s image that highlights different things in different images and tells the model what each one is.
For example, a picture in a kitchen may have “kettle”, “microwave”, “oven” and more highlights in the model. Once these are identified, the model will gradually learn to identify these issues without help. This model is extremely fast and able to change depending on your needs, making it perfect for running on a small system like Raspberry Pi.
Once the identification system started to sway at once, the next step was to add a notification system to make sure the rider was going to be able to enjoy the dogs. That wasn’t enough for the rider – but when he wasn’t home he thought the dogs still needed praise. Turning the megaphone, the rider yelled at the dog and the owners, “I like your dog!” The finger was pointed at the system for sending some predefined messages to compliment it like this. Even if it is understandable, some people may unsettle the message a bit, but everyone in the video seems to have had a good time. However, as one commenter mentioned, it would probably be nice to be able to turn on the behavior thinking, Rider, for the dog.
