CleverPet Feeder is Like a Dance Dance Revolution for Dogs

CleverPet

While Dan Knudsen was getting his doctorate in neurosciences at UC San Diego, he studied auditory perception and learning, using behavioral, electrophysiological, and computational techniques.

While Leo Trottier was enrolled in UC San Diego’s graduate program in cognitive science, he published research on visual processing, and was interested in the idea of using a video game to help students learn anatomy.

Together, Trottier and Knudsen have founded CleverPet, a San Diego startup that has developed a Web-enabled and mobile app-connected snack server for dogs that they describe as “the world’s first interactive pet learning and entertainment device based on the science of animal behavior.”

The co-founders say CleverPet is intended to help dogs and other pets get through the boredom of the day while they’re alone at home. The company says American pets spend more than 10 billion hours alone. For a pack animal like a dog, that can lead to separation anxiety—and such behavioral issues as ceaseless barking, spinning thousands of circles while biting its tail, or gnawing on irrigation sprinklers in the yard.

Their solution is a battery-powered interactive device that rewards your dog with a treat for solving simple puzzles, using LED lights to illuminate three scuff-resistant plastic buttons. The device holds at least two cups of dry dog food, and can be programmed to automatically provide a kibble whenever a dog hits an illuminated button with its paw or when the animal masters more complex sequences or patterns.

Think of it as the paws that refreshes—or as a Dance Dance Revolution for your dog.

CleverPet device 2“The animal can interact with this all day long,” Knudson said during a CleverPet demonstration yesterday at San Diego’s Ansir Innovation Center, where the company has been incubating. “The cool thing is that we can make their interaction more challenging as they get better at it over time.”

The CleverPet founders say they are initially targeting dog owners. Trottier, who has two cats at home—Jonas and Salk—says some cats will interact with the CleverPet device and some won’t. In fact, one expert in animal cognition—comparative psychologist Christian Agrillo at the University of Padova in Italy—was quoted recently as saying, “I can assure you that it’s easier to work with fish than cats.”

CleverPet is one of four companies enrolled in HardTech Labs, a new San Diego accelerator program that offers hardware startups some investment capital and provides access to low-cost manufacturing in Tijuana.

The co-founders say they have funded their prototype development so far with a small angel investment. They also began a Kickstarter campaign today with a target goal of $100,000, which would enable Trottier and Knudsen to refine the design and get the CleverPet device into early production. They are working with Outerspace Design, a design and engineering firm in Melbourne, Australia.

All the pieces are in place, Trottier says, and early production models should be available by next spring as rewards for contributors who support CleverPet’s Kickstarter campaign.

Trottier and Knudsen based their prototype on an Arduino processor and Spark Core, a small WiFi-enabled development board that makes it easy to connect to the Internet. Using the technology, the co-founders also developed a mobile app that enables pet owners to access their home CleverPet device remotely, see how much food a dog has consumed, and adjust the program to make it easier or more challenging. The co-founders say it would be relatively easy to create a Web page for each device, so pet owners could log onto a website to see how their pet is doing. Adapting a bit of video game jargon, they joke that pet owners will want to see if their dog has earned enough experience points to “level up.”

“This device is going to cut down on boredom, anxiety, destruction, and self-mutilation—behaviors known as kennel stress or kennel crazy,” Trottier said.

San Diego dog trainer Graham Bloem, who has been working with CleverPet, says dog owners already are hiring dog walkers or taking their pets to doggie daycare. In fact, Americans spend more than $58 billion a year on their pets, according the American Pet Products Association.

Nevertheless, Bloem says the pet world has been asking for something like CleverPet for a long time. Instead of coming home to a bored and anxious dog with pent-up energy, Bloem says interacting with CleverPet “exhausts your dog mentally and physically. You’re coming home to a healthy, happy pet.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.