Animal Care Services is launching a new facial-recognition tool that will allow users to tap a cellphone app to help reunite them with lost pets.

The high-tech app, called Finding Rover, scans a pet’s unique features from an uploaded front-facing photograph and logs the snapshot in a free database.

Finding Rover CEO John Polimeno said the app’s facial technology can search local shelters for a registered pet that’s lost and make a match. He said it’s as easy as hitting a special “bark button” that makes a barking sound to get the pet to look at the camera.

“This is about saving animals,” he said Friday afternoon, before a training session at the ACS annex. “Just take a picture and see if you can return it home and mend a broken heart.”

The app is free to use and download. Residents can register their pets by Facebook or email. Polimeno said 77 shelters have signed up to use the app that’s credited with finding more than 500 dogs to date. A program for cats is scheduled to launch in July.

At 11 a.m. today, ACS will officially launch the app at Pearsall Dog Park, 4700 Old Pearsall Road. Kathy Davis, ACS director, will kick off the program with help from Petco Foundation Executive Director Susanne Kogut, Polimeno and District 4 City Councilman Rey Saldaña.

Saldaña called the app a potentially lifesaving tool that keeps the community moving toward making “San Antonio a more humane and responsible place for pets and people.”

Polimeno said he thought of the idea three years ago after seeing a poster about a lost dog at a coffee shop that reminded him of terrible memories when his family dog was missing for a few days. He discussed the idea of an animal facial-identification app with his wife, who called it a potential “game changer.”

Polimeno partnered with the University of Utah research and development department, which developed the app. He said it has the ability to identify a dog or cat with 99 percent accuracy.

In 2014, Polimeno began working with shelters after the director of San Diego County Animal Services contacted him to use his technology. He said he just returned from Australia, where the largest shelter organization is pushing legislation to make the app mandatory.

The Petco Foundation is encouraging the use of the app by pledging a $20,000 grant to ACS if 20,000 local residents sign up to use the Finding Rover app by July 4. Residents can register online at www.findingrover.com.

Davis said the technology could help pet owners find their animals quicker if they come to ACS and reduce the lenghth of separation. Before placement, all dogs at ACS will be registered in the Finding Rover database as part of intake processing that includes sterilization, a registered microchip and vaccinations.

“It’s free, it’s easy and best of all, it gets pets home where they belong,” said ACS spokeswoman Lisa Norwood.

Kogut said the Petco Foundation and Petco are committed to helping make San Antonio a lifesaving community, investing more than $1 million in San Antonio Animal Care Services to help animals. She said they have commitments of about $2 million to all animal-welfare organizations in the San Antonio community.

Kogut said that with widespread use, the app can create a centralized database for lost and found pets and can reshape the way lost pets are reunited.

“Neighbors can return pets directly to their neighbors and lessen the burden on Animal Care Services,” she said. “Sometimes it is small actions like this that can make a tremendous difference for the animals.”

vtdavis@express-news.net

Twitter: @vincentdavis