Robots will take the UF campus today to show off their skills cooking breakfast, mixing cocktails and finding their owners’ keys.
Electrical and Computer Engineering professors Eric Schwartz and Antonio Arroyo will host the annual Robot Media/Guest Demo Day in the Harris Corporation Rotunda in the New Engineering Building from noon to 4 p.m.
The event will showcase about 20 student-built bots, some of which will have interactive presentations.
Students’ robots were made in UF’s Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory course, its Integrated Product and Process Design program and its Machine Intelligence Laboratory.
Each semester, students in the Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory course were told to invent a robot that performs a task for humans. Today’s demonstrations are a chance for students to publicize their projects. It’s also their final opportunity to improve their grades in the course, Schwartz said.
“The idea of having a robot is not to make it do things that humans do,” said Camilo Buscaron, a 23-year-old computer engineering senior. “It’s to make it do things that require human thinking to do.”
This year, SubjuGator will be on display. The autonomous submarine is a world champion in underwater vehicle competitions for the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International.
Schwartz said the demonstrations are opportunities to show the community that engineering is an exciting field.
“I want to motivate everyone, from little kids to students trying to decide what to do, to major in engineering,” he said.
