Former Amazon engineer developing apps that translate cat chirping into language people understand

A former Amazon engineer is working to answer a question that most cat owners ask: what is my cat talking about?

Javier Sanchez, formerly in the Alexa development team at Amazon, is currently a project manager at technology company Akvelon (Bellvue, Washington). His current project is an application called MeowTalk, which promises to translate the sound your cats make into a language that humans can understand.

” It’s not a language. They don’t speak word for word or communicate. In essence, cats never meow to each other ” – Sanchez said.

Through research, Sanchez and her colleagues found that when a cat meows in front of you, it usually wants to convey one of nine different intentions, and each of those “messages” has a type of meow. own meow.

Using her experience in developing Alexa as well as information from the aforementioned research, Sanchez wants to decode the meows into phrases the cat is trying to express, like “I’m hungry” or “me. that’s hurt”. Cat owners who download the app will be able to record the emperor’s meow and get a translation of that sound. They can then selectively refine and train the app to learn the unique tones of their pet. They can also provide feedback on the accuracy of the translations to the Meowtalk development team.

” Using machine learning, MeowTalk instantly translates your cat’s meow into one of the nine intentions a cat would express; those nine represent the cat’s mood and thoughts. Each cat also possesses meows with their own unique pronunciation and vocabulary, beyond those nine common intentions “- the description of the app says. ” You can train the MeowTalk app so that it learns your cat’s unique meow vocabulary by telling the app what each meow means when your cat comes out. for the app 5 to 10 sample meows (eg “food”, “let me out”), the app can start recognizing that meow when it hears ”

MeowTalk is still in development and will continue to be refined and updated steadily. You can download a trial version for Apple and Android phones . Sanchez hopes the app will be a success, and he and his colleagues will be able to develop a necklace that translates your cat’s meow while it’s talking.

Reference: People