We’ve seen the Twitter-enabled car, but Sony Computer Science Laboratories has taken things a step further with the Twitter-enabled cat – or, at least, a computer that a cat could theoretically wear.
Developed in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and profiled over on Tech-On, the Sony Lifelogger is a somewhat bulky-looking gadget designed to be attached the cat’s collar and drape over its chest. How likely the cat is to take kindly to such behavior – and what you’re supposed to do when it inevitably scrapes its collar off on a nearby branch and leaves your expensive electronic doohickey high and dry – isn’t part of the prototyping experience.
The device itself takes the form of a watertight box of electronics, containing a Bluetooth radio for communication with a host PC and a range of sensors including accelerometers and GPS for motion activation and geolocation.
Using data from the sensors, the Lifelogger is able to make assumptions about the activities the cat is currently engaged in – drinking, eating, chasing a mouse, and so forth – and use this information to post one of a selection of pre-generated phrases to microblogging sites, including – inevitably – Twitter.
While the system is currently limited to just eleven stock phrases, Sony promises that more will be added shortly – and states that the system can even use historical information to combine comments, such as the knowledge that the cat has been outside followed by a trip to the food bowl triggering the comment “Meals taste better after a walk.”
An embedded camera not only takes images of – hopefully – interesting events in the cat’s day, but is also linked to algorithms that can recognize other cats and snap images of the feline friends your moggy hangs around with while you’re out at work. Images are geotagged, too, so you can see exactly where all the cat hot spots are in your town.
There are some interesting omissions in the device’s design, however, that may be corrected when – or if – the device leaves the prototype stage. The main sticking point is the use of Bluetooth: while adding a GSM or CDMA broadband modem would increase the cost of the device – and require a data plan – it would allow the cat to tweet freely, away from a host PC. It would also give users a way of tracking the device down in the not unlikely event that the cat manages to separate itself from the gadget.
So far there has been no mention of a product in the offing, but it’s not inconceivable that in the future your cat or dog could be participating in the joys of social networking – even if it’s completely unaware that it’s doing so.
