So one of the inventions I’ve been thinking about is a cat barf cleaner. The other morning my daughter woke up early and walked out into the front room in the dark. She stepped in the cat barf, then, of course, came to get me to clean it up. If there had been someone awake, like a little robot who doesn’t need to sleep, it could very easily have detected the horking sound, and located and cleaned the wet spot. I’m imagining a little Chibi Robo with a toothbrush, but that’s probably not very practical. Probably a little guy that looks like a bottle cap with carpet cleaner and a towel. In the case of poop (most likely dog not cat), it would have a little shovel and a plastic lined repository to store the poop until it can be cleaned.

Then I came across the really funny/not-funny article on the Guardian about how the Roomba, with no mess detection ability, will smear the mess around the room. We need better designed robots!