For many people, having a pet is a dream that may not come true for different reasons, for example, because their landlords don’t allow it. However, the brand new Animal Pal pet-walking AR app might be a solution for these people.
You can now have a virtual pet, which you can customize in many ways. You can take it out for a walk in your favorite park and train it. And your landlord won’t object, because the pet exists solely inside an AR app.
What Does the Pet-Walking AR App Offer?
Currently, users can choose between two animals as their pets (called “partner to walk with” in the app). One is a teddy bear-looking dog, and the other one is a bit more strange option for a pet – a shark.
When you first install Animal Pal, your pet is not able to communicate. It’s just like in real life, where you have to train a pet and get them to trust you. As you walk your pet around the neighborhood, you will find word cards, which you collect.
As you collect more word cards in the pet-walking AR app, you can start communicating with your virtual pet. The words appear randomly and you will have to wait to collect several.
In the beginning, they won’t form logical sentences. Thus, users should walk their virtual pet a lot in order to find and collect lots of words.
Animal Pal Encourages Virtual Pet Owners to Interact
The pet-walking AR app is also a great way to socialize with other people. Users can trade word cards with each other. At the same time, they can share moments with their virtual pets.
Collecting and trading words allows all pets in the app to develop a vocabulary and write letters to their owner at the end of each day. According to the developer, this is the first app of its kind.
Who’s Behind the Pet-Walking AR App?
Animal Pal is the work of Pretia Technologies, an AR tech startup based in Japan. Earlier this year, the company raised 700 million yen (around US$4.7 million) for the launch of its AR Cloud Platform.
According to the company’s mission statement, they “believe in the tremendous power of bringing people together beyond devices.”
The team believes that sharing time together in the real world is of utmost importance, and with the rise of augmented reality, they “envision a world where any physical location becomes a space for all kinds of shared experiences.”
The pet walking AR app is the first example of the company’s vision for an interconnected real and virtual world.
Basic Requirements for Using Animal Pal
The pet walking AR app is now available in 173 countries across the world. It can be installed from the official app stores on both Android and iOS devices for free. In order to use Animal Pal, your phone must support ARCore and ARKit, respectively.
