In Tokyo's Yoyogi Park, Japan's analog to Central Park, on most weekends you'll find scores of middle-aged Japanese ladies wheeling their dogs around in baby carriages, dressed to the nines in frilly doggie outfits. It may sound silly, but in Japan doting on your dog is serious business.
Now those pet owners have a new accessory to layer onto their pets that might actually be useful: a cloud-connected pedometer.
Today, Fujitsu unveiled the Wandant dog pedometer as a piece of wearable tech for pets in response to Japan's growing obsession with giving its dogs a wide array of human-style luxuries. The name Wandant is a combination of the Japanese word for a dog's bark, "wan wan," (which in English would be "woof woof") and the word pendant. The device uses a three-axis accelerometer to log the dog's steps taken, and it even records the dog's shivering motions and body temperature changes.
To capture data from the device the owner can simply hold their NFC-enabled phone near the Wandant and the data transfer will be initiated. That data is then sent to the cloud and presented as graphic statistics that the owner can review on a daily basis on a website via desktop computer or on a special mobile site for Android handsets.
Pricing for the device hasn't been announced, but Fujitsu confirms that the monthly change for the cloud service will be about $5.
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