After the electronic cat flap, which recognizes your animal and therefore allows it to enter your home, here is the intelligent connected cat flap. Or when artificial intelligence helps ensure that your favorite feline no longer brings home dead animals. Explanations.
Today, there are many models of electronic cat flaps that recognize animals authorized to enter or not thanks to the presence of an RFID chip on them, like the SureFlap from Sure Petcare for example. But the intelligent cat flap from the Swiss manufacturer Flappie, presented at CES which is being held in Las Vegas, from January 9 to 12, 2024, goes even further since the idea here is to only let it enter your home if it does not has nothing in his mouth, and especially no dead animals that he wants to give you as a gift. No more birds and dead mice left at the foot of the bed like so many trophies!
Flappie presents itself as an innovative cat flap which, thanks to artificial intelligence, detects the presence of prey when the cat is identified in front and prevents it from returning home with them. In fact, when it approaches the cat flap, the animal’s body is scanned by different sensors and if the device detects the presence of an animal in its mouth, it automatically locks the entrance. The goal is that, over time, the cat understands that it is no longer allowed to enter its home with prey.
It is thanks to machine learning, that is to say the study of numerous videos of cats with or without prey in the mouth, in different varied lighting conditions, that this system of recognition, already 90% reliable according to the manufacturer. In fact, when the cat is detected with prey, an alert is sent to its owner’s smartphone. He is then free to let him in by remotely unlocking the cat flap.
The first copies of this new generation cat flap are for pre-order on the manufacturer’s website, with first deliveries planned for spring.
