Leo Trottier (Co-Founder and CEO, CleverPet, Inc.)

The talk was not filmed at the request of the speaker.

CleverPet: Realizing the potential of other animals by combining hardware, software, and the crowd

In the US 68% of households include a dog or a cat. Usually, for most of their lives, these animals have very little to do, and until recently no software tools existed for training, interacting with, or understanding them. Yet collectively we are fascinated with and entertained by companion animals, both our own and others’. Might there exist an opportunity to combine this intense interest with the reach of the internet and the productivity of software? Here I describe an approach for doing so at scale that generates insights into behavior and cognition while being financially sustainable.

About the Speaker

Leo Trottier is a unique blend of cognitive scientist, software engineer, product designer, and entrepreneur. He is founder and CEO of CleverPet, a startup that uses smart hardware to teach pets automatically through advanced cognitive and behavioral science techniques. Leo is an alumnus of San Diego’s EvoNexus and the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator (powered by Techstars). He has a degree from the cognitive science and A.I. program at the University of Toronto, and started CleverPet while a PhD candidate at UC San Diego. Before CleverPet, Leo ran Scholarpedia, Wikipedia’s academic equivalent, where he worked with Nobel Laureates to “wikify scholarly canons.”