A Dutch Engineer Makes A Face Recognition Gadget For His Cat

Harin - Feb 25, 2019


A Dutch Engineer Makes A Face Recognition Gadget For His Cat

A Dutch engineer decided to build a face recognition device that recognizes when his cat is outside and notifies him via a messaging app so he can let him in.

To ensure that his cat does not have to wait at the door too long before being able to come inside, a Dutch engineer decided to build a face recognition which can identify the cat and send him a notification.

Arkaitz Garro is the engineer mentioned above. He works at WeTransfer in Holland. The door at his house does not have a cat-flap, so every single time, his cat wants to go inside, it needs to wait until his wife, or he notices it outside the door. So he needed to think of a solution to this.

Rather than installing a cat-flap, he decided to take a step toward technology involving a messaging app, face recognition software, motion-detection sensors, and AI. You might think it is time-consuming to make something like that, but Arkaitz says that he only spent a few hours as the software and hardware he used is accessible to everyone.

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According to Arkaitz, the cat actually had an owner, who resided just a few blocks away and was willing to “share” the pet. Therefore, the cat has now set up a specific time when he would come to Arkaitz’s house.

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That’s when the problem emerger. Neither Arkaitz nor his wife had time to wait for the cat to show up at the door, so they needed to do something.

With a Raspberry Pi mini-computer and a camera, Arkaitz designed a device that would utilize image-recognition and motion-detection AI software to identify the cat automatically and send him a message so that he could let the cat in.

He explained:

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If the machine recognizes the cat, not just some other cat, animal or a piece of litter, it will alert Arkaitz with a message through the Slack messaging app.

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Arkaitz continued:

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But ultimately, the device proved to be the right solution to his problem.

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