It is one of the more unlikely consequences of the pandemic: a plague of dog shit, with no obvious solution in sight. This story originally appeared on WIRED UK. The rise is down to the sheer number of potential pet owners that rushed to realize the dream of owning a dog while in lockdown. Such was the demand, the price of puppies in the UK more than doubled last year, with popular breeds selling for more than £3,000 a pup. And with such money came the thieves and fraudsters.

There are over 35 million households in the US with dogs and backyards, and it may be safe to say that not one of them enjoys cleaning up their pet's mess. A firm has designed a robot that finds, detects and automatically scoops up what your canine friend left behind. Called Beetl, this machine is equip with computer vision and front cameras to hunt down dog poop. Once the robot spots feces within your yard, it moves directly over it and uses a mechanical claw as a scoop. And the robot holds it in a sealed container for disposal. Bettl's sensors not only help it detect a mess, but also avoid obstacles and stay within a perimeter.

A quick search on Google will show that robot cleaners and dog poo don't go well together, yet none of the big players out there have offered a solution (Sony's Aibo doesn't count). Another pain point that has put me off from acquiring a mopping robot is the fact that the mop -- often a piece of detachable fabric -- requires manual cleaning, which is rather awkward even if there's no faecal smearing. To my surprise, it was a Chinese startup at TechCrunch Shenzhen that seems to have it all figured out. Veniibot, a Chengdu-based team of over 20 employees, unveiled its Venii N1 mopping and sweeping hybrid robot at the TechCrunch event earlier this week. While you may not have heard of this startup before, its talents were hired from the likes of ZTE, Baidu, Motorola, Foxconn, Ecovacs and more.

A Dutch startup is set to release a fleet of'drones' to combat the 220 million pounds of dog droppings left on the Netherlands' streets each year. Called Dogdrones, the vehicles will work together as a team to detect and scoop up the poop. The aerial drone is fitted with cameras and thermal energy technology that transmits GPS coordinates of the feces to a rolling robot on the ground that immediately leaves its hub to clean up the waste. A Dutch startup is set release a fleet of'drones' to combat the 220 million pounds of dog droppings left on the Netherlands's streets each year. Watchdog 1, uses a camera and thermal imaging to scan the environment for canine waste. The thermal imaging will then crate a heat map showing the location, which is translated into GPS coordinates and sent to Patroldog 1 – the ground robot.