You've read that right

Artificial intelligence is being used to do many weird and wonderful things, and some of them are so left field they make you pause and contemplate the nature of reality.

Spotta, a British startup spun out of University of Cambridge, has developed an AI-based system to help with the ancient human problem of bed bug infestations.

The Bed Pod is a surprisingly high-tech baited trap aimed at hotel owners that takes a picture of the incoming bug and classifies it, using a pre-trained AI model. If the invader is a bed bug, it uses the built-in LoRa connectivity to notify the hotel.

“Each pod is low power, running for at least a year on a single battery, with two layers of processing to identify bed bugs at all stages of their lifecycle,” explains co-founder and CTO Neil D’Souza-Mathew.

The Bed Pod has just won an honorable mention in the Fast Company 2020 World Changing Ideas Awards.