Leaving your dog at home as you head out in the morning can be a stressful affair, especially if the canine makes those heartbreaking whines or has a history of bad behavior when left alone. The CleverPet is a device that aims to mollify these concerns by keeping your precious pooch company and engaging them throughout the day with button-based puzzles. In other words, it’s Simon for your dog. The plain white device, which looks like a futuristic food bowl crossed with a small toilet bowl, has three touch pads positioned at its front. Throughout the day, the CleverPet will light up its touch pads and reward your dog for pressing them.
Dogs aren’t meant to stay cooped up inside while their owners are away from home, so a company called CleverPet is looking to produce a gaming device for our furry friends with the help of Kickstarter. The CleverPet is a dog game console, according to the eponymous company that wants to bring it to market. The autonomous system is designed to engage and educate dogs throughout the day by challenging the animal with a variety of puzzles, and rewarding it with treats upon success. Three touch-sensitive, light-up pads sit at the front of the console, and a dog can use its paws or nose to interact with them. CleverPet is imbued with algorithms so it can adjust the difficulty of those puzzles on the fly, and owners can track their dog’s progress and add new challenges through a website or mobile app. One of the games is a take on Dance Dance Revolution that challenges the dog to touch pads as they light up in a particular order. According to CleverPet, the device can hold as much dog food as a standard dog bowl. And the system runs on the Arduino-compatible Spark Core, so users can build custom software for it.
