Aug 10, 7:18 AM
EDT
Robot Shopping Carts Follow
You Around
By RON WORD
Associated Press
Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- 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
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