PATCH: Personalized Academic & Therapeutic Connection Helper

"PATCH" is a robotic dog and co-regulation companion for trauma-impacted learners in schools that supports safe, successful, trauma-informed learning environments. 

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affects students' ability to experience success in school. Trauma impacts academics, behavior, and relationships. Therapy dogs are having a positive impact on trauma-impacted children already. However, there are a limited number of properly trained dogs and a myriad of logistical issues around including live therapy dogs in classrooms. These issues  include meeting the dogs' needs (nutrition, elimination, and exercise) as well as considering the needs of all members of the class who may be allergic to dogs or afraid of them. Live therapy dogs are not easily integrated into a classroom. 

Our solution is a robotic therapy dog, PATCH. It can co-regulate with a child like a live therapy dog. It will guide the child through regulating activities such as breathing  or visualization exercises and keep data on the success of interventions. PATCH cannot do harm. It will not soil the classroom. It does not have odor. It is non-allergenic. PATCH is less responsibility for child and the teacher but has potential to allow students to experience success in school. 

While robotic pets are being used with the elderly and children with autism, they haven’t been used with trauma-impacted children or in general education classrooms. PATCH will have different functions than existing robotic pets, including the ability to collect real-time data and provide biofeedback, which students will use to check-in with themselves. Through visual connections, touch, and subtle movements, PATCH guides students to self-awareness of their physiological and cognitive states, prompting them, through haptic cues, to readjust themselves without disruption. PATCH reduces need for teacher intervention by helping students personally manage their mind-body experience and regulate their classroom presence.

In this solution, technology is used to ameliorate the difficulties of using live therapy dogs with children in classrooms. PATCH is a robot with a friendly canine-oid face, quadrupedal mechanical frame, and internal computer processor with extensive capabilities enabling it to collect and measure biodata, provide prescriptive biofeedback and engage in visual, auditory, and haptic forms of communication with its user. Sensors and registers as well as voice command and remote control features are integral to PATCH's design and function, allowing a co-regulation tool to be accessible to more children in classrooms, mitigating disruptions and reducing need for teacher intervention. 

We would like to connect with robotics experts to design and create a prototype that can be piloted within the next 12 months. 

Based on the pilots of PATCH, we would like to see PATCH deployed in therapeutic schools and public schools in Massachusetts as well as in select schools overseas. We also envision partnering with international agencies to bring PATCH to schools in refugee camps. 

Our team has connections with several therapeutic and public schools in Massachusetts where we expect to pilot PATCH. Our networks as international educators also extend to universities in the Arab Gulf and Europe, international schools, and NGOs working in education, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. 

We are in the idea phase. 

Within the next 12 months, we hope to pilot PATCH with 10 children. Within 3 years, we would like to see PATCH with at least 100 children. The impact of PATCH will go beyond the individual child to benefit all children in the classroom by decreasing disruptive behavior and highlighting technology's positive role in classroom dynamics, learning processes, and promoting safe, successful educational environments. 

The two team leaders have PhDs in education and significant networks in the field. Our two other team members are children. One is a student in a public school. One is in a private therapeutic classroom. Both have lived experience related to our PATCH project and are eagerly lending their expertise to the project. 

We are currently looking for an angel investor and grant funding to develop and pilot the first generation of PATCH.

We are looking for partners to help us make our vision a reality. We have the education expertise and network to launch PATCH but do not have the technical skills to make this project a reality. 

lack of technical skills