GAINESVILLE, Fla. - It looks almost like any other
shopping cart, except sensors allow it to follow the shopper
around the supermarket and slow down when needed so items can
be placed in it, and it never crashes into anyone's heels.
Gregory Garcia dreamed up the
robotic cart to solve a childhood peeve of being accidentally
hit with shopping carts by his sister.
His cart, also known as B.O.S.S. for Battery Operated Smart
Servant, was one of about 30 robots on display Wednesday by
students at the University of Florida, who worked the past
semester on the projects using their engineering backgrounds.
"The immediate thing that jumped to my mind was all those
times as a kid when my sister would accidentally hit me with a
cart," Garcia said. "It seems like the public would really
want this since everybody shops.
Jeremy Greene, 23, of Panama City, created a robot named
Atlas, which balances a blue ping pong ball on a flat piece of
wood as it moves across the room. He said he sees no real
world application for his robot other than entertainment.
When the electric engines of Antoin Baker's robot Cypher
roared to life, the device lifted about a foot off a table,
tethered by rubber bands. Cypher, a flat wooden square topped
four engines, could be made into a flying device to lift heavy
objects in the same way a helicopter does, Baker said.
"If the rubber bands break, run very fast," said Eric
Schwartz, one of the two professors in the robot course.
Rolando Desrets' small robot made of wheels, gears and
sensors, picks up pingpong balls. It then aims and tosses into
a basketball net. He said he will later use the robot to
compete against other colleges.
Students were given free rein in deciding the type of robot
to construct. Robots range from Carlo Pasco's poker robot that
deals cards to poker players to Bryan Talenfeld's invention
that tells color blind people the color of a traffic light.
"My friends and I play poker all the time, but there is one
kid who we do not deal because he is notorious for dealing
from the bottom of the deck," Pasco wrote in his introduction
about his robot. "An automated poker dealer would take the
doubt out of human dealing, alleviating this problem once and
for all."
The student-built submarine called the SubjuGator 5 has won
first place for two years in a row in competition with other
universities.
The robot is a clear tube about two feet long. It has
cameras and sensors it uses to follow a simulated pipeline,
said student Carlos Francis, 24, of Gainesville.
Francis said similar robotic submarines could be used to
check underwater pipelines and could send back pictures to
people on land or in boats.
Topped with a wig of dredlocks and a colorful hat, one of
the most popular robots is Koolio. The robot delivers cold
drinks to faculty and students who order them over the
Internet.
Adam Grieper has a similar robot called the Beertender,
which senses people and offers them a beer.
"At this university, every piece of the robot puzzle has
been solved," Schwartz said.
He said students have designed flying, walking and swimming
robots.
About half of the students are registered for the summer
2005 semester of the Intelligent Machine Design Laboratory
course. The other half are students in the Machine
Intelligence Laboratory or students in the MIL's National
Science Foundation sponsored Research Experience for
Undergraduate program.
UF students have been building autonomous mobile robots
since 1993 ranging from submarines to helicopters, from planes
to snakes, and from hydrofoils to alligators. Most of the
students showing robots Wednesday were seniors in engineering
or graduate students.
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On the Net:
Machine Intelligence Laboratory: http://mil.ufl.edu/5666