I feel like I spend a fair portion of my life trawling the backyard, looking for the little piles of poop my dog left when it was dark out and I was in my slippers and/or it was raining and I couldn’t be bothered to go outside. It’s a pain — sometimes literally because I’m in my mid-30s and my back hurts, OK? — but now it doesn’t have to be because the geniuses at Beetl Robotics have come up with an incredible solution.
- It’s a poop seeker and scooper. The Beetl does something simple but amazing: it detects where your dog’s poop is using the computer vision onboard cameras and then goes over and picks it up for you with its mechanical claw, no problem.
- It puts the poop in a sealed container. You can then remove that container to dispose of the poop all at once, then get on with your life. While it shouldn’t be reeking immediately, the Beetl is picking up excrement so you probably want to empty it ASAP.
- Beetl can learn too! You can hook Beetl up to cloud technology so it can continue to learn new behaviors, which is pretty cool. However, straight out of the gate, it’s able to detect obstacles and avoid them. You set the perimeters of the area you want to use the robot in and it can navigate all on its own. Pretty neat, right?
- Sadly, it’s not commercially available yet. Unfortunately, the robotics team behind the Beetl still have the product in the testing stage to iron out any kinks and to make the robot as clever as possible. That means you probably won’t be able to order one of these things anytime soon, which sucks, but at least we know a convenient answer to the endless task of picking up our dog’s poo is on the horizon!
