On the move
How do you survey a selection of people in a large space? It can be very labour intensive and time consuming to have a person approach strangers to ask a simple question, but being approached by a robot might be intriguing and efficient. A robot can be reprogrammed to ask a different question on another occasion.
A team of Information Technology students, Jayden Caldwell, Joel Glasgow and Heather McDonald have built a robot, named Dot, to do just that. This project incorporated hardware and software development with human-computer interaction. Dot's movement can be controlled remotely or automated to stop and turn when she reaches an obstacle.
Dot is built on a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner engine and the students 3D-printed additional parts they needed to construct the chassis. They also coded the controls and the inter-'face'. Dot can be programmed to move around the room and interact with people.