Babies cry. A lot.
Unless you’re some kind of super nanny/child-rearing savant/baby whisperer, baby cries are indecipherable. For those of us who need a helping hand, there’s a wonderful app called the “Infant Cries Translator.”
Developed by Taiwanese researchers Chang Chuan-Yu and pediatrician Dr. Chen Si-Da from the National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin, the Infant Cries Translator seems to be the Shazam of baby cries. As shown in the video below (thanks to AJ+), the app records around 10 seconds of crying before offering a solution: either your baby is hungry, is in pain, has wet diapers, or is just plain tired and cranky.
This app was developed with two years worth of baby cries from around 100 babies, with a database of over 200,000 cries. But there’s a catch: the system isn’t perfect. he older babies get, the more difficult it is to understand them, presumably because language starts to become more prevalent and defined.
According to Yahoo Parenting, the researchers claim that the app is 92% accurate for babies under two weeks. For babies that are one tp two months old, it’s up to 85%. For babies up to four months old, 77%. But don’t fret: the app is being constantly updated by its Cloud Drive database with all of the newly recorded cries that come from app users. This gives a larger variety of cries and allows the system to evolve over time. The more users put in, the more users can get out of it over time, though it would most benefit later users than early adopters.
The Infant Cries Translator can be downloaded through iOS and Android via the App Store and Google Play respectively, for $2.99 USD. Let us know what you think about the app in the comments below. Also, here’s hoping that a variety of animal translators come along so we can all be Doctor Doolittles with our pets. I’m pretty sure my goldfish has been trying to tell me the meaning of life and I want to get the answer before he forgets again.
Sources: AJ+; Yahoo Parenting