great idea till your picking cat poop out from between the tines.
I was wondering about. How does the urine work in these things?
This litter pan is going to be way too small for most cats. It looks like the depth of the litter will guarantee that you will have clumps stuck to the bottom of the pan, which will not be thoroughly cleaned by the tines of the rake. Also, a pre-set timer for cleaning is a bad idea. I’d be afraid that no matter what time you select, at some time a cat is going to be using the box when the rake starts, and wind up frightened by it - which could mean never using the litter box again.
I’ve owned self-cleaning litter boxes in the past, and this one has too many issues for me to consider.
Thank you. I have 2 big cats and 1 is not great at cover up. 
I’m considering something like this and your input gave me more to be aware of.
I agree that the size of the litter pan maybe too small for most cats.
However, it seems there is infrared sensor on motor area, which means the unit may not activated when a cat is doing her business - I don’t have one, so don’t take my word for it, but it does not make sense to have big company like Arm and Hammer design a litter box that will scare the cat away.
I found only one youtube “demo” - YouTube
Look at the reviews for the Litter Robot. It gets the best reviews of any automatic litter box. It is much more expensive, but it doesn’t have the flaws of the others. I bought one. So far, it’s perfect. I bought the LR III Open Air model, which is their latest and greatest and seems to have taken care of any problems the previous models had. I do feel it is totally worth the price, though, because I never have to sift litter anymore. Just change the bag in the bottom and add litter. With two small cats, I seem to be changing the bag every 4 days as long as I shake the poop draw once to evenly distribute the turds that are in the bag.
Dude, that thing is 600 bucks. For that price, i’d expect the poop to get sent to Mars.
I’d always been curious about these and probably would’ve actually bought this since it’s a tad more reasonable than the usual prices of these automatic boxes, but I JUST bought two of these things:https://amzn.com/B005E2S77C
and I really don’t think I need to try anything else, ever. Paired with a Litter Genie, or something like it, and taking care of my cats crap is a breeze (and I ain’t talking about those Breeze system boxes, my cats wouldn’t even touch the pellets for it).
Though… I am still curious… but I can’t justify buying one just on curiosity.
Here’s a good review to use:
One thing to always look out for is to see if the device requires you to buy something specific for it to work. Like can you get the litter collection bags anywhere or do you have to buy them from the maker (pricey) and sometimes even that cat litter has to be expensive.
I personally use the petzone smart scoop. I’ve had great success with it and have owned two of them in the past five years of owning a cat. Sometimes they will have a mechanical problem with hard clicking or stuck scoopers. In both of those cases, once I figured out the mechanical problem the device kept working. The first time I accidentally broke the device before I figured out what the issue was. The second one ended up requiring me to bend part of the metal scooping part.
While that sounds like a hassle (because it was a hassle at the time), it’s still the most cost effective option on the market.