Robot mode…activate

UF College of Engineering freshman, Justin Wright, teaches Johnny Fields, 8, and Levy Fields, 6, pediatric patients at Shands Hospital for Children at the University of Florida, how to play with a toy robot designed by his team on Aug. 3 at the Shands Atrium. The Gator Bot team won first place during the summer design course competition./Photo by Maria Farias.

Never had an alligator crawled through the doors at Shands Hospital for Children at UF until Aug. 3, when pediatric patients stepped outside their hospital rooms to become judges for the first Robot Day competition. The event was the culmination of a summerlong collaboration between the hospital and the UF College of Engineering, in which patients described what their ideal robot would be like, and student engineers made those ideas a reality. Patients ages 4 to19 voted for their favorites. GatorBot, designed by Barry Banks, Marino Guzman, Sierra McVeigh and Justin Wright, chomped its way to first place.

“What happened here today was really neat,” said Scott Rivkees, M.D., chair of the department of pediatrics in the UF College of Medicine. “I hope this is just the beginning of a long relationship with the College of Engineering and Shands Hospital for Children.”