The problem with owning cats is that for whatever reason, cats love bringing home dead animals they have killed. It can be a bit gross and also unsanitary, but this is something that cats do and we can’t really do much about it, or can we? That’s what Amazon product maanger Ben Hamm did when he designed an AI-powered cat flap for his home.
For those unfamiliar, a cat flap is similar to a doggy dog in which it is a small flap cut out in your door which lets you cat in and out of your house. To prevent his cat from bringing home dead bird and what not, Hamm decided to rig his cat flap with an AI-enable camera using Amazon’s DeepLens, and also an Arduino-powered locking system.
The AI was trained with machine learning algorithms created by Hamm and it was capable of detecting his Hamm’s cat, called Metric, was coming or going and if Metric might have prey in his mouth. If the camera detects that it does, then the cat flap would lock up for 15 minutes and Hamm would receive an alert. The system would also then make a small donation to the National Audubon Society, which is an organization tries to protect the birds that cats love to kill.
While we don’t think we’ll be seeing this system go on sale anytime soon, it does sound like a fun project which you can learn more about in the video above.
Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence). Source: theverge