GatorBot gets top marks from young patients in UF engineering design competition

Every day, Gators roam the halls of UF&Shands, the University of Florida Academic Health Center, in the form of fans, students, faculty members and even mascot Albert the Alligator.

But never had an alligator crawled through the doors at Shands Hospital for Children at the University of Florida until Friday, when pediatric patients stepped outside their hospital rooms to become judges for the first-ever Robot Day competition.

The event was the culmination of a summerlong collaboration between the children’s hospital and the UF College of Engineering, in which young patients described what their ideal robot would be like, and student engineers made those ideas a reality.

After playing with the finalists, Bumper Bots, GatorBot and Basketball Shootout, the children voted for their favorite.

GatorBot, designed by Barry Banks, Marino Guzman, Sierra McVeigh and Justin Wright, chomped its way to first place.

“My favorite robot was GatorBot, because it had the most efficient features and it was well put-together,” said Morgan Lopez, a 17-year-old patient from Palm Harbor, Fla. “It was pretty cool. It had a little game that went with it, which was neat.”

During the final competition, Scott Rivkees, M.D., chairman of the department of pediatrics in the UF College of Medicine, spoke about the unique partnership opportunities that exist within a university setting.

“Our patients took their responsibilities in this competition very seriously, and I think they really inspired the students to do some great work over the last five weeks,” Rivkees said.

In June, the young patients participated in a series of sessions during which they shared their design ideas. The freshman engineering summer school students were challenged to bring those ideas to life using Lego Mindstory NXT kits and software produced by National Instruments.

The Top 3 from among 25 competing teams made it to Robot Day by earning the highest grades on their final projects when the summer course concluded.

Engineering instructor Dan Dickrell, Ph.D., said the project was a way to jumpstart his students’ imagination and broaden their design ideas.

“We’re giving the students hands-on experience and allowing them the opportunity to see the kids interact with their robots,” he said. “This is something we haven’t done before. Usually, we just give hypothetical circumstances. This is real life, and we hoped our students would be motived to really do their best.”

Patients as young as 4 and as old as 19 provided initial input and helped judge the competition.

“Seeing the smiles on the kids today and coming here was reward enough,” said GatorBot co-creator Guzman, after receiving a handmade first-place certificate with a painted handprint.

Guzman, an electrical engineering major, is part of the engineering college’s Successful Transition Through Enhanced Preparation for Undergraduates Program, or STEP-UP, an initiative aimed at increasing the percentage of underrepresented minority students recruited and successfully retained through graduation.

He and his classmates would be happy to see Robot Day become a regular event.“What happened here today was really neat,” Rivkees said. “Engineering is everywhere in medicine today. We see it all around us in the equipment we use every day. I hope this is just the beginning of a long relationship with the College of Engineering and Shands Hospital for Children.”