Trolley Trolls is a motorized cart designed to assist in carrying items, allowing users to have their hands free for other tasks. This original device was presented as a senior design capstone project at the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Open House and was created by Ralph Lawrence Graham ‘24, Taylor Michael Madison ‘24, Alfonso Rivas ‘24, and Ernest Whitbeck ‘24. In this Q&A session, team members Graham and Madison discuss their project. 

How does your senior design capstone project work?   

Graham: Our project is a 3-tiered self-following motorized cart. The person using the cart wears a belt with a code on it. The code is then detected and that’s what triggers the cart to move. We used webcams attached to a Fusion 5 running image processing via Python that then feeds data to a PID controller system running on an Itsy Bitsy M4 chip to make the cart function.  

Madison: We also talked about having distance sensors on the lower half of the cart. It goes much slower in reverse than it does forwards. If you go forward, it will go forward but if you come toward it, it will go backward but not as fast.  

What inspired you to pursue this project?  

Madison: Our team member, Alfonso, originally had the idea of a suitcase that would follow you through an airport. Some faculty didn’t know how practical placing a bunch of batteries and cameras on a suitcase would be, especially considering security risks for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Aviation Association (FAA).  

We decided to go with something more utility-based that we could use around campus and came to a cart that could be used for a lab or food.  

Are there other applications this motorized cart can have?  

Madison: It can be applied to maintenance, hospitals, grocery stores, and even restaurants. We see all these areas benefiting from something like our cart for hands-free tasks.  

How do you feel after completing your project?   

Graham: We achieved what we were intending. It took a lot of research and trying things out. It was a process, and it was amazing to see the result of it and how everything works. It helped develop our skills more and we look forward to doing more things in a professional environment. 

Madison: Even as a senior project that was supposed to be a showcase of what we’ve learned, we were learning continuously through this project. Continuously touching on other parts of engineering and developing skills we already have, it was great to put it all together.