Cat@Log Cat Lifelogging Tool Auto-Tweets, Packs Feline Face-Recognition

With ideas like a mobile cat lifelogging tool, it's hard to imagine why Sony's share price might be so weak at the moment.  A collaborative effort between them and the University of Tokyo, the collar-mounted Cat@Log uses accelerometers and GPS to track the kitty, before taking photos with the integrated camera, beaming them via Bluetooth to a nearby PC, and uploading them to Twitter with one of eleven preset phrases.

Those exciting phrases can include such witty gems as "this tastes good" when the cat has been eating.  However, Sony are working on improving the Cat@Log repertoire, including the ability to pair up phrases to make for more exciting tweets: should the cat grab a bite to eat after going for a walk, the message might say "meals taste better after a walk".

Best of all, there's cat facial recognition which Sony have enabled by uploading thousands of photos of cats to their database.  That way the system will be able to recognise friendly felines or flag up territory challenging tomcats.  It's like a soap opera on Twitter, only with fur.  No word on whether the Cat@Log lifelogger – which is part of a research project called "Wearable sensing for enhancing human-animal interactions" – will ever see commercial production.

[via Twitter]