Flappie AI Cat Door Stops Your Pet From Gifting You Dead Mice

"For those who don't appreciate the 'gifts' your cat drags in, this might be a solution from a Swiss start up," writes Slashdot reader maudlins11. Engadget reports: Finding weird pet-related technology is a CES tradition, and this year is no exception. Take Flappie, for example. The Swiss start-up is showing off an AI-powered cat door that automatically locks if your kitty tries to bring in prey it caught from the outside. On the side of the door facing the outside, you'll find a motion sensor and night-vision camera. Flappie says it has compiled a "unique and proprietary" dataset over the years, with a focus on diversity -- this means getting lots of different kinds of cats as well as prey, filmed in a variety of different lighting conditions. The company says that its AI-powered detection system is accurate more than 90 percent of the time, which means your cat could still get a mouse inside. But hopefully that'll happen a lot less frequently. There are some manual switches on the inside of the door so you can lock and unlock it any time you want as well as turn off the prey-detection system. Eventually, Flappie says that pets are likely to be trained that they can't enter when carrying something, and when they drop the prey the door will promptly unlock so they can get inside. Flappie also included chip detection in its cat door. So if your pet has been microchipped, you can make it so the cat door only opens for your specific pet. And, of course, there's an app so you can control the door from your phone. But if you're not inclined to hook the Flappie door up to the internet, it'll still work via the controls on the door itself. The product is launching in Switzerland and Germany later this spring, with a $399 price tag. Alternatively, you can pay $199 with a two-year $8.90 monthly subscription to save all the videos the door records of your pet.

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