Italian company Volta, a specialist in the development of AI-centric products, won the Innovation Award in the Smart Home category at CES 2019 with its new pet feeder Mookkie.
“With Mookkie, we have taken one of the simplest and most humble objects in our homes and reinvented it by deploying the latest in artificial intelligence technologies,” said Silvio Revelli, CEO of Volta. “This is what we do every day at Volta with multiple objects and processes. In this case, the result is a fully-interactive pet feeder, which visually recognizes each individual cat or dog and places their prepared food in front of them.” The advantages concern safety as well as food conservation. The bowl can be connected to a dedicated smartphone application to record pet usage and monitor the amount of food present, alerting the pet owner when more food needs to be added.
Through a wide-angle camera that deploys logic similar to the face-unlock feature of modern smartphones, Mookkie records images of the animal for which the food is intended, then deploys the trillion operations per second necessary for visual recognition, allowing the product to visually identify the presence of the pet and allow access to the food. Mookkie also provides notifications and short video clips through the dedicated smartphone app, with an interface that allows for a two-way flow of information. Mookkie’s technology is patented and the design registered. Working in collaboration with the Pet Electronics Company of New York, Volta plans to introduce Mookkie in September 2019 at an initial price of $189.