Softbot 

The Softbot: An Autonomous Softball Collecting Robot

As a collegiate softball player, I knew firsthand how frustrating it was to lose valuable practice time collecting hundreds of balls scattered across the field. For my senior thesis, I wanted to combine two of my biggest passions—softball and robotics—to solve a problem that had followed me throughout my athletic career. I designed and prototyped Softbot, an autonomous softball retrieval robot featuring a custom roller intake designed in SolidWorks, 3D-printed components, Raspberry Pi-based controls, and YOLO computer vision to detect, navigate toward, and collect softballs autonomously.