China’s smart pet care market is expanding with a range of artificial intelligence devices, driven by growing consumer demand in a sector valued at approximately US$46 billion, Belt and Road News Network (BRNN), a partner of TV BRICS, reported.
By 2025, the number of cats and dogs in China’s cities had exceeded 126 million. Driven by these figures, pet care is becoming increasingly tech-driven and sophisticated, with the AI-based smart gadget industry moving from automatic feeding and health monitoring towards full-fledged interaction between humans and animals.
At a popular pet products exhibition held in Shanghai this spring, visitors viewed a range of smart technologies for pet care, including smart cameras, water dispensers, feeders, and companion robots.
One company unveiled an entire ecosystem integrated into a dedicated platform that tracks pets’ health data. The system includes a smart water bowl with drinking behaviour recognition, a food bowl that alerts the owner to any anomalies, and a cat litter tray with face recognition and litter analysis features.
Smart wearable devices for pets are also improving year on year, with some smart collars continuously monitoring a pet’s activity, sleep duration, and heart rate. If any worrying deviations are detected, the system instantly notifies the owner.
Additionally, reports detailed a smartphone designed for pets that is built around communication, safety, and health monitoring. The gadget enables the owner to interact with their pet remotely, send training commands, and track its location via GPS, while a camera records what is happening from the pet’s perspective.
Wang, a Chinese woman who owns several cats, said she uses a feeder with a face-recognition function where each pet is assigned its own profile in the system after initial registration.
“Even if I add large chunks of freeze-dried food, the device works flawlessly. When I’m away on business, I use the app to monitor when and how much each cat has eaten, and I can also see how much food is left in the feeder,” Wang said.
