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Student serves up robot a la 'cart'

Erica Ogg Former Staff writer, CNET News
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur.
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Erica Ogg

I am so sick of clanging carts with fellow Trader Joe's shoppers.

I mean, don't get me wrong: love Trader Joe's, love my fellow discount-gourmet foodies, but the narrow and inexplicably diagonal aisles plus low prices equal cart collisions waiting to happen.

That's why this is, well, genius.

University of Florida student Gregory Garcia invented a smart shopping cart called B.O.S.S., or Battery Operated Smart Servant. His non-accident-prone cart was one of 30 robots showed off by UF students on Aug. 10.

Sensors in the cart allow it to trail you around your local Trader Joe's or favorite shopping destination, and when you want to snag something of the shelf, the B.O.S.S. slows down to let you drop your item into it.

Garcia told the Associated Press that "the immediate thing that jumped to my mind was all those times as a kid when my sister would accidentally hit me with a cart."

Plenty of us can feel his pain.