Obamabot encourages voting

Standing awkwardly at six feet tall with electric blue eyes, a bumbling red-head sporting nothing but an Obama T-shirt paraded around the University of Florida campus last Wednesday. ObamaBot is the brainchild of mechanical engineering major Bryan Hood.

“This is the first phase in demonstration robots,” Hood said. “The long-run goal is to have robotic marches on Washington.”

The project was kept secret until ObamaBot’s debut at Michelle Obama’s downtown rally Oct. 22.

“We’re trying to get people aware of the early voting and get people to vote who wouldn’t have voted otherwise,” Hood said.

Hood and his partners, Camilo Buscaron, a UF sophomore, and Andres Vargas, a mechanical engineering graduate student, collaborated on the project for a machine intelligence lab.

“Obama’s message is important to us, and the way we went about it — through robotics — was something we all could relate to,” Buscaron said.

The team contributed $250 of their own money, two weeks and three all-nighters to making ObamaBot fully functional.

The machine, largely an assembly of remote control motors, batteries, transmitter receivers and an LCD screen, can cast a powerful glance with its laser eyes, move at 4 mph and pirouette in a circle.

“We wanted to make it flashy, yet simple,” Vargas said.

ObamaBot’s campaigning technique, which consists of brandishing signs reading “Powered By Hope: Vote Early,” inspired incredulous stares and a flourish of cell phone cameras.

“There are actually people who come by and ask about early voting and we send them in the right direction,” said Hood, “So maybe in four years, we’ll have a whole army of these guys out here.” Can anyone say clone wars?

all eyes on american voters

“Obama or McCain?”

One might expect to hear that question on any given campus in the United States.

But, according to an article by the Boston Globe, the U.S. isn’t the only country obsessed with the presidential election.

American students studying abroad have been accosted in cafés, bus stops, at weddings, during mountain treks, at dinner parties and at night clubs.

“Once they know you are American, the only issue of concern becomes the election and the reasoning behind your choice,” said Cassie Leventhal, a Northeastern University junior who spent a year in Paris, France.

Aviva Gat, a Boston University junior, was probed for political views as far away as Australia.

“Every time someone heard my accent they immediately asked me what I thought about Obama, everyone from shop owners to waiters to taxi drivers,” Gat said.

After interviewing several hundred New England college students, the Globe concluded that charged sentiment towards the U.S. presidential race is pandemic, affecting countries as diverse as Belgium, Ecuador and India.

“I’ve lost count of how many conversations revolved around why I should vote for Obama or how Sarah Palin is the most bizarre VP choice,” said Danielle Ryan, a BU junior studying in London.

Many students mentioned an enhanced sense of responsibility to vote as a result of their travels.

“I never realized how much this vote would affect the outside world, but it does immensely,” Ryan said.

Reach columnist Sara Grimes at news@dailyuw.com.