Retriever Rover:
Many individuals with limited mobility struggle with bending down or moving around their homes to pick up boxes and grocery bags. Our project aims to address this challenge by designing and building an autonomous indoor robot that can locate, pick up, and return objects to the user at a comfortable height. The robot will be able to receive a user’s request through a simple interface, navigate safely through an indoor environment, identify the desired object using a camera, pick it up with a gripper, and deliver it to the user at a height such that the user does not need to bend down.
The design goal of this project is to create an affordable, practical, and accessible assistive robot using low-cost hardware and modern artificial intelligence software. The robot will use computer vision to recognize specific objects and autonomous navigation software to move around obstacles and furniture. The focus on accessibility, combined with real-time object detection and autonomous navigation, makes the project both socially impactful and technically interesting. Overall, our project demonstrates how robotics and AI can be applied to improve independence and quality of life in everyday home environments.