At CES 2019, Italian company Volta, a specialist in the development of AI-centric products introduces Mookkie, a smart pet bowl that recognizes your pet. “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 at each pet’s disposal.”
The advantages not only focus on safety while ensuring access to food for each pet; but it also guarantees freshness and food conservation. “The bowl can be connected to a dedicated smartphone application to record pet usage and monitor the amount of food present, while also alerting the owner to the need to resupply,” explains Revelli.
As a company, Volta essentially rethinks and redesigns existing products and processes from the ground up, taking into account the wonderful new “ingredient” of Artificial Intelligence. “Mookkie offers a prime example of how it is possible to re-invent practically every object we know – even the simplest – by placing artificial intelligence at the heart of product design and engineering,” said Revelli.
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 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 activate a door opening to allow access to food.
Mookkie was designed with two users in mind: the pet and its owner. The food storage bowl is easy to remove and efficiently repositions itself thanks to a magnetic interface. The bowl’s shape is highly ergonomic, reachable from every point and thus accessible by every type of animal. 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 at an initial price of $189 USD. Mookkie will be available for purchase at major e-commerce sites or through mookkie.com.