CES: CleverPet feeding device hands pooches pause for thought

Cats are certainly smart enough, but CleverPet says they don’t suffer the same boredom problems.

CleverPet is an internet-connected feeding device that requires your dog to activate large buttons or pads.

You might not teach your dog to do crosswords or play tic-tac-toe, but it’s less inclined to bark or dig up the garden when home alone if its mind is occupied.

That’s the rationale of CleverPet, an internet-connected feeding device that requires your dog to activate large buttons or pads in a preconceived order to get breakfast or a reward. It’s a bit like safe-cracking for dogs, but the reward is biscuits and other treats rather than gold or cash.

CleverPet is the brainchild of Leo Trottier, a US PhD candidate in cognitive science, and Dan Knudsen, who calls himself an automated animal inter­action specialist.

CleverPet was on display last night at ShowStoppers, an annual gadget event held as part of CES, the huge global technology show held in Las Vegas every January.

CleverPet says the puzzles a dog performs are easy enough to start with. At first, the dog will get a treat whenever it presses any of CleverPet’s buttons. After mastering this, the dog will get a treat only when it presses the pad that is lit up.

Later, the dog is rewarded only after pressing the pads in a predefined order. The progres­sion from simple to complex puzzles is automatic and games from the CleverPet hub are downloaded automatically via Wi-Fi.

Games include “catch the squirrel”, where the light darts from pad to pad, and word learn, where the dog learns to trigger the left-hand pad when it hears your prerecorded voice say “left”.

Can cats use CleverPet? We were told “yes”, cats are certainly smart enough, but CleverPet says cats don’t suffer the boredom problems faced by dogs.

CleverPet units will start shipping next month for $US299 ($421) and can be bought online. The start-up got $US180,000 in funding through crowd-funding site kickstarter.com.

Chris Griffith travelled to Las Vegas courtesy of Sony and Acer