Forget Optimus Prime.
Fourteen UF engineering students proved Monday afternoon that their original self-made and designed robots could perform real-world tasks such as putting out fire, taking out the trash and keeping pets entertained.
A crowd of about 40 UF students and faculty stood in the New Engineering Building to watch as students presented their robots, which acted independently.
The robots were the final projects of students in UF’s Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory.
Eric M. Schwartz, the associate director of UF’s Machine Intelligence laboratory who helped students with their projects this year, said the class is different because it offers students hands-on experience.
The robot project has been assigned to the class since 1993, and the robot showcase has been held since 1997, Schwartz said.
“I just thought, the world has to see this,” he said.
On average, each robot cost about $250 to construct. But the College of Engineering supplied students with connectors, wires, LEDs and LCDs — things every robot needs in order to run, Schwartz said.
The robots had to be able to move around, act independently and perform a specific task, he said.
Although students had to follow these requirements, UF computer engineering senior Matt Shockley said they were given complete freedom in how they chose to design their robots.
Shockley, who designed OMNI, an omni-directional, autonomous robot that uses infrared sensors to detect and move toward specific colors, said the class doesn’t compare to any other he’s taken because it’s about being creative.
“You look around, and [the robots] are all different, and that’s great,” Shockley said.
Students presented the SubjuGator, a 13-year-old submarine project by UF’s Machine Intelligence Laboratory, along with a solar-powered robot car designed by UF’s Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
The solar car, which took second place at the 2010 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers SoutheastCon hardware competition in Charlotte, N.C., took students nine months to make, said John Phillips, a UF freshman who is not in the IMDL class.
