by Tiago Justino and Dhananjai Hariharan.
Ritchie The DeskBuddy is a 3D printed robotic tiger that works as an ambient device for reminding and notifying users about events relevant to their life. In this project, we attempt a different approach to combine digital information into a physical object, by representing event information from Google Calendar through this robot. Ritchie is a tiger sitting on a car which plays a melody while waving the arms, blinking the eyes and moving around. Through the use of such an ambient device, we seek to be able to drive user reaction and to also form an emotional bond with the user. We also aim that such a device can be used to imbibe new habits in users.
Here's a short video demonstrating Ritchie in action! [Ritchie on YouTube] (https://youtu.be/oZcq6YSlPy8)
For more details on this project, take a look at this paper: Project Paper