Kyiv ¨C The device used many of the same electronic components as the most lethal weapons of modern warfare. It was operated remotely. It could recognize images. It fired a laser.
Well, a laser pointer. The device, Petcube, was created by a Ukrainian entrepreneur, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, and his team. It is a smartphone-controlled gadget for remotely watching and entertaining dogs and cats when they are home alone. When Azhnyuk first tested it on a colleague¡¯s lonely, incessantly barking dog, the animal jumped around wildly chasing the laser, he said.
Petcube is now sold in dozens of countries. But the company¡¯s founders have moved on to a new idea, one that reflects an across-the-board transformation of Ukraine¡¯s civilian technology industry into a hub of military contracting.
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