Cats keep jumping on your countertops? This robot will scare them off

By Luke Dormehl May 23, 2017

Meet CatNani

What is the cat’s natural adversary? If you replied “dog,” hang your head in shame! According to the creators of a new Indiegogo campaign there’s only one real answer — and it’s “robot.”

That’s the basis for a device called CatNani, a robot that promises to tirelessly guard the tables and countertops in your home; keeping a beady eye on your furry feline and scaring it off those surfaces by way of an ultrasonic warning — backed up by a quick burst of harmless citronella spray for good measure. Over a short period of time, the hope is that your cat will learn to respect its robot overlord and steer clear of climbing where it doesn’t belong.

A bit like the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, CatNani boasts some smart sensors it uses to get its job done. These include object-detection sensors, pet-location sensors, and all-important table-edge detectors, so your new robo-gatekeeper doesn’t plummet off his perch the moment you leave for work.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The team behind the project is almost comically overqualified for the task at hand — with the inventors coming from, or having done work for, companies including Amazon, Microsoft Research, and Facebook, and having an assortment of deep learning-based image recognition qualifications to back up their dream of cat-free kitchen surfaces.

Right now, the product is available for pre-order on Indiegogo, where a CatNani unit will set you back $55, with a proposed shipping date of January 2018.

Sadly (for us, not the cats) the product may take a bit longer than that to come to fruition. So far, CatNani’s campaign has raised a whopping $330 against a target fundraising goal of an optimistic $500,000, with just 14 days left on the clock. While we fully appreciate that anti-cat robots are something of a niche product, we don’t think it deserves that kind of disappointing fate.

Let’s hope that CatNani has eight more lives left after this one …

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I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…

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