These camera-equipped dog goggles keep special-forces canines connected to their handlers

But the doggles don’t come cheap.

By Christina Mackenzie

9 hours ago

Fusil and his gugglets Concepts

When Thomas was a special forces dog handler in the gendarmerie—a French militarized police force—he found it worrisome when he lost sight of his canine, Fusil. The pooch was trained to follow a laser beam that allows the handler to point to objects or places that are far away, and to work at night or other low-light conditions. But when the dog went out of view, he could not, of course, see what its status was.

“I had no way of knowing where he was, what he was seeing, or of giving him an order without raising my voice,” he says. “I just had to wait until he came back.”

So Thomas—who prefers that we not reveal his last name as he is still on active duty in the gendarmerie—started thinking about how to resolve these problems. He wanted to be able to see where the dog was, and to give it orders that only the animal would hear. And the system had to be comfortable and easy for it to wear.

https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/special-forces-dog-goggles/