Feline Good

The goal of the project was to create a meditation device to help ease stress. Through the pandemic, I have been coping with stress and difficult times by bothering my cat. He has been very patient with me snatching him out of his afternoon naps to hang out in my room during class, the only problems being the mess of fur getting everywhere and his escape attempts. That was when the idea of a robot cat came to mind, where you get the benefits of petting something soft that purrs while not having to deal with cat hair everywhere or any cattitude.

Cat purrs have been speculated to be good for their owner’s health in reducing stress and lowering blood pressure. With that in mind, I thought creating a robot cat with a motor inside to replicate the idea of purring would be, at least, a fun way to help anyone reduce their stress. I reused times around my house to create the base structure out of cardboard and hot glued old cloth around it to give the user a soft surface to pet, then gave it some facial features with stickers and made the tail the USB that activates the purring when plugged in.

It was a daunting idea at first but once I started getting the pieces it all fell together and the final product was better than I hoped for.