I live with three cats and they get pretty competitive for food. Cat’s are grazers, meaning they generally do not like to finish a meal all at once; they like to spread it out throughout a day. However one of my cats is quite a fatty and she will always go for all the food until she gets sick. I propose an intelligent food bowl that can detect which cat wants to eat from it using infrared sensors pulsing at different frequencies for each cat. This way I can control who gets to eat out of the one bowl!

The bowl has a rotating interior panel that covers and un-covers the entry to the food. A button can control which cat gets to graze. If more than one cat is detected at once, the food bowl will not open. The red LED turns on when it detects a cat.

This prototype does have small infrared LED lights out and will be embedded into a cat’s collar.