Here comes the Robo-Fridge!

As long as I’ve been meddling in hobby robotics, the holy grail of the field has been to build a robot that can go to the fridge to fetch beer. This turns out to be a lot harder than it might at first appear. Thinking “outside the bot,” as it were, a couple of University of Florida students came up with a novel idea: bring the entire fridge to your lazy ass on the couch.

Coolio is a mini-fridge on a mission: to bring sodas and snacks (yeah, right) to the students and profs of Benton Hall. Enter a request via Coolio’s Web page and he finds his way to your room, using IR and ultrasonic range-finding and vision processing. Besides the idea of bringing the mountain to Mohammad, Coolio sports some other nifty features, such as an LCD screen for a face that allows him to have expressions and his ability to self-charge. We’re sorry guys, but as cool as Coolio is, the dreadlocks and tam hat have GOT to go. Seriously.