Felik is designed to respond to anything that appears to be moving for safety reasons. For example, you may have a robotic vacuum cleaner that Felik detects and avoids. Felik does not have the computing power to identify a living being from an inanimate moving object with accuracy above ~85%, so it avoids anything that appears to be moving as a precaution.
False Positives
When Felik mis-identifies something as a moving object to "run away" from, this is called a "False Positive". False positives are usually object detections that should not happen. Specifically, Felik should not be detecting objects that are not moving.
Some false positives, however, are normal. Below are examples of objects that Felik may interpret as moving:
- Running TV screens
- Mirrors and reflections
- Sudden light changes
- Sun shadows/highlights from blinds
- Objects outside the window (tree branches, cars, etc)
Felik will attempt to ignore its own laser, but occasionally (especially in dark environments) it may interpret the laser dot as a moving object. This is because laser refraction patterns are very difficult to predict. We will continue training Felik's AI classifier to avoid detecting its own laser, so this will improve with time.
Reducing False Positives
With the above in mind, it is still possible to reduce the number of false positive detections by following these guidelines:
- Reduce the Sensitivity setting, making sure that it is set high enough so Felik can still detect your pets, but not so high that Felik reacts to every small thing. Start from the lowest setting and work your way up.
- Reduce the Responsiveness setting. Try setting this to the lowest value and working your way up. If the Responsiveness value is too high, the laser will begin moving away from the pet too soon.
- Ensure that Felik is placed in an area with constant lighting, meaning that the light in the room does not change rapidly or flicker.
- Reduce shadows/highlights from the sun and minimize reflections where possible.
- Minimize the number of bright light sources in Felik's view. Just like a human eye, Felik's camera will have a difficult time detecting objects in dark corners if it is blinded by a lamp.
- Make sure the room is not too dark. Darkness tends to introduce video noise into most cameras, and Felik's laser will be perceived as brighter than normal.