An estate agent has come up with a life-like dog root that will tell you when you’ve received interaction on social media with a woof.
Jason Buzi, who usually invests in property rather than wacky inventions, came up with the idea of a pet that will keep you in contact with your followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Soshee animatronic dogs are modelled on the Hungarian Puli dog breed, which also happens to be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s favourite pet.
Although the dogs look cute on the surface, they’re operated by four servo motors under their plentiful fur. Whenever someone interacts with your social accounts, whether they comment, like or send you a message on a social platform, Soshee will respond with an action. That could be a bark, or even a little dance.
Buzi came up with the idea when he was having a chat to his mates. “Wouldn’t it be cool to make something that’s cute and not just robotic, but looks life-like?” he apparently suggested.
So he set to work designing the pet and the companion app, installed on a phone. However, they’ll only be able to respond to social media notifications, not SMS messages or phone calls.
Buzi is now looking for $250,000 on Kickstarter, because its not cheap making one of the dogs. Each is at handmade, so that $250,000 will go towards mass producing them, he explained. They may only be 6-inches tall, but they’re very intelligent and look very lifelike because the hair is all attached one strand at a time at the moment.
They will retail for around $169 when they go on sale. Buzi is hoping to expand his line of social pet dogs with other breeds if it takes off, but doesn’t plan to launch other pets just yet.
