The Cat

Inspiration

Just a week ago, local news reported on an elderly man who wasn’t found in time by first responders, ultimately leading to his tragic passing. His story hit home—he reminded me of my grandma, someone I always build projects for. With the recent California wildfires adding to the urgency, there had to be a faster way to help in these situations.

Why a Cat?

Firefighters always save cats from trees—what if a cat could be part of the rescue team?
Inspired by the Coraline cat—known simply as The Cat—who appears just when Coraline needs him the most, coming to save the day. What if we could all have The Cat?

What it does

This 8 jointed cat has the dexterity of well... a cat. This means that no matter what kinds of debris, rubble, or housing, The Cat can overcome.

With this ability, it runs around burning houses in search for people. After finding them, it sends a summarized report to emergency services on them including their age and medical health so first responders can act more efficiently.

It also has a swinging tail to be more visible in fires, a flashlight to improve the quality of reports it creates through smoke, and a gimbal for a head to stabilize it's camera no matter how much damage it takes.

It can also converse with people with low latency, giving them instructions like creating a damp rag.

On top of this, it is able to use the internet to search for streets to find the nearest fire hydrants so fire fighters know exactly where to go.

How we built it

Lots of blood, sweat, and tears went into making this—mainly blood though because it kept scratching me.

For the brains of the cat, the processing and summarization report was through using OpenAI's GPT 4o mini vision feature.
For the conversational stage, I hacked a way to use ElevenLabs' Conversational AI with python!
For finding a nearby fire hydrant, I utilized ScrapyBara to find one by deploying a virtual environment and scrapping the web.
For making calls, I used Twilio
For detecting people, Yolov8 nano.
For many of the robotics parts, I used a mash of different libraries, utilizing sin functions to map out the motion of each leg.

The hardware system is built off of 9 metal gear servos, (4 legs, 1 tail), controlled by an Arduino NANO + PWM Servo Driver, powered by x2 14500 batteries ran through a step down transformer. On the side, there is also a gyroscope which helps stabilizes the head turning it into a gimbal.

A majority of the materials are made from scraps like eraser heads for the feet!

Challenges we ran into

Making the cat walk took up more than 12 hours, second only by the design reiterations for the cat. Building without planning proper weight, materials, or knowledge on walking robots, were some of the greatest obstacles I've ever faced at a hackathon.

Getting through airport security was also pretty tough with a box full of electronics.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

SOLO. This was my first solo in-person hackathon and created one of my most technically advanced projects. I am proud that the walking looks smooth on the cat and the overall functionality met my expectations.