Will the cat soon only come into the house without a mouse?
21.4.2023
Translation: machine translated
No more dead mice and ruffled birds at home ... every cat owner dreams of this. The intelligent cat flap from an ETH start-up now seems to be realising this dream. In future, cats with prey in their mouths will be faced with closed gates.
Flappie. This is the name of "possibly the first cat flap that combines artificial intelligence with an integrated prey detection system", as ETH Zurich writes in a release. In simple terms: Flappie recognises whether your cat has prey in its mouth. If this is the case, it cannot enter. Flappie only grants access to cats without prey. And it works, as the developers Oliver and Denis Widler say. The test cats quickly adapted their behaviour and learned that they only enter the house when they leave their prey outside.
Source: Flappie Technologies GmbH
Flappie is equipped with all the bells and whistles: artificial intelligence, night vision, motion detector, infrared camera and lighting as well as a corresponding app. It goes without saying that so much high-tech doesn't come for free. If Flappie comes onto the market in late autumn as announced, you will have to fork out just under 450 francs. That's many times the price of a conventional cat flap. Some of these are already available for less than 20 francs.
Are you not put off by the comparatively high price? On Flappie, pre-sales are already underway with early booking discounts.
I think cat flaps are great. Our cats can get in and out without having to rely on us. We used to have a standard cat flap. But over time, all the cats in the neighbourhood came in and out of our house and made a mess of our cats' food. That's why we now have a chip-controlled flap. This reliably only lets our own cats into the house as long as I change the batteries every few months.
The market will sort it out
I'm used to regularly cleaning up cat prey or leftovers at home. It's neither appetising nor fun. The fact that an intelligent cat flap can help with this immediately made me sit up and take notice. But I'm not going to rush into anything, Flappie is simply still too expensive for me. Various suppliers could provide a remedy. A quick search shows that intelligent cat flaps are being developed on several fronts. At Pawly or Kitty Flap, for example, development seems to be at an advanced stage. I'm curious to see exactly when the first smart cat flaps will come onto the market and how prices will develop.
What is your first impression of this product? Would it be something for our Galaxus range? I look forward to your comment.
Cover photo: Shutterstock
I'm a full-blooded dad and husband, part-time nerd and chicken farmer, cat tamer and animal lover. I would like to know everything and yet I know nothing. I know even less, but I learn something new every day. What I am good at is dealing with words, spoken and written. And I get to prove that here.
56 comments
later