Pet smart hardware is selling like hotcakes. Where are the opportunities for IoT module/solution providers?

In recent years, the pet economy has been on a continuous upward trend, and pet product consumption is even referred to as the "second maternal and infant industry." In addition to regular pet products, the smart pet hardware category has become one of the fastest-growing niche segments. According to data from the global market research and consulting firm Future Market Insights, the global market size of smart pet products will approach $6 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% from 2024 to 2034.

The growing market demand has also driven the rapid expansion of the smart pet hardware category: from basic care products (such as smart feeders, water dispensers, and automatic cat litter boxes) to health monitoring products (wearable collars, positioning trackers, and physical sign monitoring devices); from interaction and companionship products (smart cameras, companion robots, and interactive feeding toys) to safety management products (electronic fences, smart access controls, and anti-lost devices), etc. A wide variety of new hardware products cover the daily life scenarios of pets from multiple dimensions, including "eating, drinking, excreting, playing, and safety," and this trend has brought new opportunities for AIoT module and solution providers.

Differentiated capabilities to address industry pain points are the key

The popularization of pet hardware is not only a competition in hardware manufacturing but also a deep integration of connectivity, data, and intelligence. For module/solution providers, simply providing "communication" is no longer enough. Differentiated capabilities are becoming the key to future competition.

① Multi-modal capabilities: Enable devices to "understand" pets

Traditional single sensors can usually only obtain information from one dimension. For example, a pedometer can only record the number of movements, and a microphone can only sense barks, but this is not enough to present a complete picture of a pet. The health and emotional state of a pet are usually a comprehensive manifestation of multi-dimensional signals. Therefore, in the differentiated competition, module and solution providers must offer multi-modal perception and integration capabilities.

The so-called multi-modal refers to the integration of multi-source information such as images, sounds, movements, and physical signs to build a three-dimensional understanding of pets. From a visual perspective, cameras can identify a pet's posture, expression, and abnormal behavior. For example, a cat frequently licking a certain part may indicate a skin problem, and a dog constantly lowering its head may mean fatigue or a low mood. From an auditory perspective, microphones can capture the characteristics of a pet's barks, and AI algorithms can distinguish between "barks seeking attention" and "anxious whimpers" to help owners better understand their pets' emotions. From a movement perspective, sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes can record a pet's activity trajectory and movement patterns. For instance, if a usually lively cat suddenly significantly reduces the number of jumps, it may indicate joint problems. From a physical sign perspective, temperature sensors and heart rate sensors can be integrated into wearable collars to monitor body temperature, heart rate, and other data in real-time, providing more objective indicators for disease early warning.

For AIoT solution providers, through multi-modal integration, devices can be upgraded from simple "data collectors" to "pet understanders." This not only allows for more accurate insights into a pet's health and emotions but also enables the provision of differentiated intelligent services in scenarios such as companionship, healthcare, and feeding.

② Multi-scenario connectivity and high-precision positioning: Solve the pain point of pet loss

Pet loss has always been one of the core concerns of pet-owning families. According to data from the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy (NCPPSP) in the United States, on average, one-third of pets will get lost during their lifetime, and only less than 2% of cats and 15%-20% of dogs will eventually return to their owners. AIoT companies have a natural advantage in addressing this pain point. Through multi-scenario connectivity technology and high-precision positioning capabilities, they can provide comprehensive protection for pet safety.

In terms of multi-scenario connectivity, companies can integrate multiple communication protocols such as cellular networks (4G/5G), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NB-IoT, and LoRa to achieve seamless coverage both indoors and outdoors.

When a pet is at home or in the office, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi can be used to maintain low-power real-time positioning for accurate tracking. When a pet goes out for a walk, runs, or enters areas such as parks, GNSS and base station positioning can provide meter-level or even sub-meter-level positioning accuracy, while the cellular network can keep the data synchronized with the owner in real-time. In environments with weak signals such as underground garages, tunnels, and woodlands, low-power wide-area communication technology can be used for continuous tracking.

③ AI capabilities: Solve the problems of multi-pet recognition and behavior understanding

Due to the subtle and changeable facial expressions of pets, the recognition of their behavior and understanding of their emotions are more complex than those of humans. Previously, American researchers studied the various facial expressions of cats when communicating with each other by filming their actions. They recorded 276 different facial expressions, each composed of four combinations of 26 unique facial movements. At the same time, there are also individual differences in the movement patterns of pets, especially in multi-pet families. Devices with low intelligence are prone to recognition confusion.

Module and solution providers with strong AI capabilities can achieve high-precision understanding of pet behavior through self-developed algorithms, large model inference, and edge computing optimization. Taking facial expression recognition as an example, cameras combined with deep learning algorithms can capture the subtle facial changes of dogs and cats, such as ear position, pupil dilation, and mouth and nose movements, to determine the pet's emotional state - whether it is anxious, curious, or happy.

Multi-pet recognition can combine visual AI with auxiliary identification (such as Bluetooth or RFID collars) to distinguish the identities of different pets in the same frame, ensuring that smart feeders and health monitoring devices can generate independent profiles for each pet without being affected by data confusion in feeding management. For example, when two cats in a family are eating at the same time, the smart feeder can accurately allocate the amount of food based on AI recognition and identity tags and monitor the eating speed through the camera to determine if there is picky eating or abnormal swallowing.

④ Low power consumption and battery life optimization: Ensure long-term device usability

For pet wearable devices, portability and durability are the most basic usage requirements, and low power consumption and long battery life directly determine the device's usability and user experience. Module/solution providers need to optimize in multiple aspects such as communication protocols, chip design, and firmware algorithms to achieve this goal. Through the deep sleep mode, the device can significantly reduce energy consumption when the pet is stationary or less active at night. Using edge computing to process local data can reduce the power-consuming operation of frequent uploading to the cloud. At the same time, combining high-energy-density batteries and optimized charging management algorithms can ensure that the device can run continuously for days or even weeks.

In practical application scenarios, these optimizations are particularly obvious. For example, when a dog wearing a smart collar goes out for a walk or a morning run, the collar can record the movement trajectory and health data in real-time. If the device has high power consumption, long-term exercise may cause the device to run out of power frequently, affecting data integrity. Through low-power design, even if the pet runs outdoors all day, the device can still work stably while supporting real-time location tracking and health monitoring. Another example is that when a cat is freely moving at home and wearing a smart camera or positioning collar, the low-power design ensures that the device can still normally record activity and behavior data for several consecutive days without human intervention, and the owner does not need to charge the device frequently, thereby improving usability and user stickiness.

Overview of smart pet solutions

In response to the above capabilities, the author has also compiled some smart pet solutions currently launched by AIoT companies, as follows:

Chongzhiling Technology

Chongzhiling uses AI large models as the core engine to provide comprehensive service support from technology integration (API/SDK/SaaS/MaaS/private deployment) to customized solutions, building a closed-loop ecosystem of "perception - understanding - service - connection" to bring customized care experiences to pets.

The CZL-V4MPCM 4 million-pixel pet camera module launched by Chongzhiling Technology is designed for complex home pet-raising scenarios. It has built-in AI functions such as multi-pet recognition, eating recognition, drinking recognition, excretion recognition, and emotion recognition, and ensures long-term stable operation through hardware capabilities such as 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual-band networks, Bluetooth pairing, pan-tilt rotation, and infrared night vision. This module not only provides clear images but also enables intelligent recognition, allowing hardware manufacturers to embed more advanced pet behavior and health management capabilities into their products.

Chongzhiling relies on its self-developed pet AI large model to focus on the modeling and analysis capabilities of multi-modal data such as behavior, health, and emotions, endowing pet smart hardware with stronger perception, understanding, and decision-making capabilities, and realizing the evolution from a "recording tool" to a "smart companion."

Ezviz & Tuya

The Ezviz IoT Open Platform provides IoT components such as smart modules, APP control terminals, cloud platform access, intelligent algorithms, and operation centers for pet product brand owners and manufacturers, helping enterprises build full-link intelligent solutions with rapid implementation capabilities.

The Tuya Smart Pet Solution covers six application scenarios, including feeding, drinking, cleaning, sleeping, entertaining pets, and outdoor activities, with dozens of product solutions, empowering developers to research and develop a full set of smart pet peripheral products. Based on the one-stop intelligent solution of the IoT platform, it can achieve rapid development, with samples completed in one day and mass production in 15 days.

The Tuya Pet AI program includes: - Multi-pet recognition & multi-pet Vlog: By modeling the facial, hair, and body features of pets, it can accurately identify different pets and create exclusive Vlogs for each pet to record their unique moments. - Pet AI assistant: It can answer questions about pet abnormalities at any time and generate a daily overview of the pet with one click, making it easy to understand the pet's health status. - Pet abnormality recognition and diagnosis: It can capture abnormal pet behavior in real-time and generate detailed reports, allowing owners to keep track of their pet's health status at all times. Reports can be sent to the pet AI assistant for professional diagnosis advice. - Precise feeding & intelligent litter adding: With built-in camera image recognition technology, it can intelligently adjust the amount of food dispensed, ensuring that pets receive the optimal amount of food no matter where the owner is. - Pet profile: It covers basic pet information and daily monitoring records, making it convenient to query the pet's life profile. It supports multi-pet profiles, so there's no need to worry even if there are multiple pets in the family.

Zhihan IoT

Zhihan IoT has launched a smart pet tracker solution based on Bluetooth BLE technology.

The solution builds a near-field interaction hub centered around BLE technology. While maintaining uA-level standby power consumption, it creatively connects the collaborative paths of three technologies: the GPS module is responsible for collecting location coordinates in outdoor environments, the 4G Cat.1 module undertakes wide-area data transmission, and BLE plays the roles of near-field positioning, power consumption optimization, device control, and data transmission. The system can sense the pet's physical condition and location, and the low-power transmission channel of BLE is also used for firmware upgrades and configuration synchronization, which is many times more efficient than the traditional cellular network OTA method.

Currently, this solution has served multiple pet smart hardware brands, with the cumulative shipment volume exceeding one million sets. Market feedback data shows that the average recovery time of lost pets has been shortened from ten hours in the traditional solution to dozens of minutes.

China Mobile IoT

China Mobile has launched ultra-low-power, miniaturized customized cellular modules and AI modules (such as ML307C, MS372Q), which are suitable for various forms of pet devices such as feeders and smart cameras. They provide ultra-long battery life, significantly extending the standby time of care devices; support multi-standard access of 4G cat.1/5G to ensure stable network connection; and at the same time, the AI modules are easy to integrate sensors and edge computing capabilities, making pet care devices more intelligent and powerful.

Based on AI large models, China Mobile provides powerful intelligent algorithm support for pet care devices. Through image recognition and behavior analysis technology, it realizes all-round intelligent care and emotional interaction. At the same time, China Mobile's self-developed AIoT intelligent IoT management platform provides one-stop networking and platform solutions for pet smart device enterprises.

Axlink Technology

Axlink Technology's Rd-04 series radar modules can accurately detect pet behavior through millimeter-wave radar. This module turns the feeder from a "timing machine" into a "real-time responsive pet butler." After being integrated into the feeder, it can achieve the following "smart functions":

1. Pet approach detection: As long as a cat approaches the set range, the radar can accurately identify its arrival, regardless of the pet's fur color or the lighting environment. The system can automatically dispense food and notify the owner through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection to the APP in the first place.

2. All-weather accurate sensing: Different from traditional infrared sensors, millimeter-wave radar has the following advantages:

- Strong anti-light interference: It is not affected by day or night, backlight, or headwind. - Accurate identification of small movements: It can sense the micro-movements of pets, avoiding false triggering when the pet is not close. - Hidden installation: The radar can be embedded inside the plastic shell without damaging the appearance of the shell.

In conclusion, in today's increasingly competitive pet smart product market, the gap between manufacturers depends on their ability to understand pet behavior. AIoT module and solution providers need to continuously make breakthroughs in aspects such as multi-modal capabilities, connectivity, AI, and power consumption optimization. This not only determines the user experience of the products but also shapes the new pattern of the future pet smart industry.

Reference materials:

Chongzhiling AI solution reshapes the interaction and service mode of pet smart hardware, Chongzhiling

OneLink New Smart Connection: AI + smart pet-raising solution, redefining the new era of scientific pet-raising, China Mobile IoT CMIoT

The "pet butler" with accurate sensing - The application of Axlink radar module in smart pet feeders, Axlink Technology

Ezviz & Tuya - Intelligent solution for pet AI products, Smart Home Ecosystem Research Institute

Smart pet tracker solution based on Bluetooth BLE technology, Zhihan Technology

This article is from the WeChat official account "Internet of Things Think Tank" (ID: iot101), author: Sophia, published by 36Kr with authorization.