I’m back for a couple of sessions at the second day at Big Data Toronto, and just attended a great session by Zoran Grabovac of PetBot on the emerging markets for consumer IoT devices. His premise is that creating success with IoT devices is based on saving/creating time, strengthening connections, and having fun.
It also helps to be approaching an underserved market, and if you believe his somewhat horrifying stat that 70% of pet owners consider themselves to be “pet parents”, there’s a market with people who want to interact with and entertain their pets with technology while they are gone during working hours. PetBot’s device gives you a live video feed of your pet remotely, but can also play sounds, drop treats (cue Pavlov) and record pet selfies using facial recognition to send to you while you’re out. This might seem a bit frivolous, but his lessons on using devices to “create” time (allowing for interaction during a time that you would not normally be available), make your own type of interactions (e.g., create a training regimen using voice commands), and have fun to promote usage retention (who doesn’t like cute pet selfies?).
I asked about integrating with pet activity trackers and he declined to comment, so we might see something from them on this front.; other audience questions asked about the potential for learning and recognition algorithms that could automatically reward specific behaviours. I’m probably not going to run out and get a PetBot – it seems much more suited for dogs than cats – but his insights into consumer IoT devices are valid across a broader range of applications.