New AI Cat Door, Flappie, Prevents Your Pet from Presenting You with Lifeless Mice

At CES, it has become customary to discover peculiar pet-related technology, and this year is no different. One such innovation is Flappie, a Swiss start-up that is showcasing an AI-driven cat door capable of automatically securing itself if your feline attempts to bring in any prey it has captured from outdoors.

On the outside of the door, there is a motion sensor and a night vision camera. Flappie says it has built up a “unique and proprietary” dataset over the years with a focus on diversity – this means getting lots of different cats and prey captured in different lighting conditions. The company says its AI-powered detection system is accurate more than 90 percent of the time, meaning your cat can still get a mouse inside. But hopefully this happens much less often.

There are manual switches on the inside of the door, so you can lock and unlock it at any time, as well as turn off the prey detection system. Eventually, Flappie says, the pets will likely be trained to not get in while carrying something, and when they drop the prey, the door will immediately open to let them in. (One of Flappie’s founders admitted that a smart cat might figure out to drop the mouse, open the door, pick it back up, and then run in. But no solution is foolproof, right?)

The flappie also included a chip recognition in the cat door. So if your pet is microchipped, you can make it so that the cat door only opens for your specific pet. And of course there’s an app to control the door from your phone. But if you don’t want to connect the Flappie door to the Internet, it still works with the door controls itself.

First, Flappie plans to launch its pet doors in Switzerland, Zurich and Germany later this spring, and plans to expand from there as its production is expanded. A US launch is part of the roadmap, but there’s no word yet on when that will happen or how much the Flappie door might cost when it arrives here.

We report live from the CES 2024 event in Las Vegas from the 6th to the 12th. January. Stay up to date with all the latest news from the show here.