Step into ‘Business District’ at Imagine RIT

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Dogs are social animals, and they would like nothing more than to be by your side 24/7. But if that’s not possible, there’s a new way to monitor their behavior when left home alone.

One of the featured exhibits at Saunders College of Business during the Imagine RIT festival is Woof Warrior, a new pet technology for dogs that alerts their owners to “the pleasure of pet communication.”

“I really like technology, games and startups,” said Woof Warrior founder Joseph Waldron from Solebury, Pa. “I also like helping pets in shelters—and that’s where I got the inspiration of taking on an entrepreneurial mindset/product/internship.”

Dana Wolcott, lead innovation coach at RIT’s Simone Center for Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said he coached Waldron in a class on Applied Entrepreneurship. “He spent considerable time with customer discovery and evaluation, and this allowed him to develop a unique take on solving the problem of how folks can remotely see how their pets are doing when they are not there and they are missing them.”

The first prototype available in the Woof Warrior line is an electronic bed which comes in multiple sizes to fit specific breeds.

“When a dog is using the bed, the owner will receive a notification on their phone,” said Waldron, who graduates this May with a degree in computer science from the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

“The Wi-Fi device in the bed will offer valuable data that provides owners with information—and this might be particularly helpful for someone who worries what their dog is doing when they are not at home,” Waldron added.

Other Saunders “Business is Fun” exhibits include: The Great Suit Race, where kids race to dress for success; Nerf Jeopardy, an interactive game with business categories and prizes; and Fun with Sphero, an introduction to problem solving, programming and robotics for kids of all ages.