Considering that most cat owners are often at the mercy of their cat's every whim, one software engineer in Holland managed to take the guess work out of his cat's comings and goings using facial recognition technology.

Arkaitz Garro, a WeTransfer software engineer built the facial recognition device to keep track of when his indoor/outdoor cat would want to be let in the house. Tired of guessing and missing cues from the cat, Garro instead built a device that relies on motion detection and image-recognition AI software.

At a cost of $50 and taking only a few hours to set up, Garro used a Raspberry PI mini-computer outfitted with a camera module and motionEyeOS for motion-detection software. Everything is connected to Amazon Web Service's Rekognition AI software.

"We wanted to be notified when he was around so we could open the back door for him, as we don't have a cat-door," Garro said. "When it detects movement, it sends the picture to a recognition software, that checks against the identity of the cat based on previous imagery of the cat."

Once the system recognizes the cat as his and not a neighbor's cat or some other wildlife, the system notifies Garro with a push notification.

“It’s almost one hundred percent reliable when the cat is looking at the camera,” Garro said.