Ahhh, the lowly pet food bowl. You can paint it, re-shape it, or put it in a fancy holder, but it’s still just a dish. Silvio Revelli, CEO of the Italian firm Volta, believed his company could build a better bowl. Meet Mookkie, the feeder that keeps Fido—or Polly or even John Junior—from stealing Fluffy’s chow.
Volta redesigns ordinary products—often merging them with artificial intelligence.
“With Mookkie, we have taken one of the simplest and most humble objects in our homes and reinvented it by deploying the latest in artificial intelligence technologies,” Revelli says. His company developed “a fully interactive pet feeder.” Mookkie “visually recognizes each individual cat or dog and places their prepared food at each pet’s disposal.”
God the Creator sees us and knows us—and not just our faces. He knows where we are and everything we do, say, and think, even how long we will live on this Earth. (Psalm 139)
Mookkie must depend on its wide-angle camera. It works much like the “face-unlock” feature of some modern smartphones. Mookkie records an animal’s mugshot and stores it in the bowl’s software. When the pet with eating privileges approaches, Mookkie confirms its identity and voila! opens a sliding lid to allow access to the grub.
Okay . . . but why? Ever seen the family dog nipping food from the cat’s bowl? Or vice versa? Mookkie keeps thieving pets—and let’s face it, little kids—out of the pet food. The bowl’s built-in lid not only preserves food but also ensures each pet gets the meal its owner intended.
Mookkie designers had two users in mind with their new food storage system: the owner and the pet. The removeable, magnetic bowl repositions itself if Rover happens to knock it off-center. And the bowl’s shape allows even “flat-faced cats” (according to the Mookkie website) to nosh easily.
An accompanying smartphone app records usage and alerts the pet owner when the bowl is empty. Mookkie can even provide notifications like “Spot is eating now” or “Low on food” and send short clips (cat video lovers rejoice!) through the app.
Working in collaboration with the Pet Electronics Company of New York, Volta plans to introduce Mookkie in September. The initial price is $189—a lot to dish out. But pet lovers may find this feed bowl to be the cat’s meow.
