Facial Recognition

Joins the Lineup of Pet Recovery Tools.

- Kelly Crouch

Facial recognition is a new tool for pet recovery available to dog and cat owners. Now a lost cat or dog may be just a smartphone away. Two companies, Finding Rover and PiP (which stands for Positive Identification of Pet), have developed pet facial recognition applications (“apps”) to help reunite lost pets with their owners. Fanciers can use these alternative pet identification apps on iPhone® and Android™ platforms in several countries including the United States, Canada, and Australia. Finding Rover also works on the internet. These smartphone apps avoid some of the issues associated with other pet recovery technologies. They are not dependent on collars and tags that can be lost, microchips that can migrate or fail, or tattoos that can fade. Although avoiding these pitfalls, these apps are similar to the microchip animal identification system in some ways and are different in other ways.

Both apps involve unique identifiers and a database. Unlike microchips, however, there are no invasive procedures to implant any technology in a pet or surgery to remove it. Animal Control and other pet finders do not need any specialized equipment like the universal scanners needed to read microchips. All that is needed is a smartphone, or a camera and computer hooked up to the internet – technology that people frequently have on hand.

So, how does this type of facial recognition work?