
"A second grader gets pushed at recess. She doesn't tell her teacher — she's embarrassed. She doesn't tell her parents — she doesn't want to worry them. By the time an adult notices, it's been three weeks. This happens in every school, every day. Tattle Turtle exists so no kid carries that alone. Tammy the Tattle Turtle is an AI emotional support companion running on a simulated Reachy Mini robot. Students walk up and talk to Tammy through voice. She listens, validates, and asks one gentle question at a time — max 15 words, non-leading language, strict boundaries between emotional triage and treatment. What makes Tattle Turtle different is what happens beneath the conversation. Every exchange is classified in real time into GREEN, YELLOW, or RED urgency. A bad grade vent stays GREEN — private. Recess exclusion mentioned three times this week? YELLOW — a pattern surfaces on the teacher dashboard that no human could track across 25 students. A student mentions being hit? Immediate RED alert — timestamp, summary, and next steps pushed to the teacher. The system comes to them when it matters. We built this on three sponsor technologies. Google DeepMind's Gemini API powers the conversational engine with structured JSON for severity and emotion tags. Reachy Mini's SDK provides robot simulation through MuJoCo with expressive head movements and audio I/O. Hugging Face Spaces serves as the deployment layer — one-click installable on any Reachy Mini in any classroom. Tammy's prompt engineering uses a layered 5-step framework ensuring she never crosses clinical boundaries, never suggests emotions to students, and never stores identifiable data. Privacy isn't a feature — it's a constraint baked into every layer. Tattle Turtle fills the gap between a child's worst moment and an adult's awareness. One robot. Every classroom. No kid left unheard."
15 Feb 2026