More than a dozen robots built by Gator Engineering undergrads were showcased to the public and media.

Coin Frog didn’t mind the wet weather on Monday. In fact, it preferred it.

That’s because Coin Frog is a coin-collecting robot that works underwater and is meant to collect treasure at the bottom of money-infested fountains.

Coin Frog, along with 21 other student-produced robots, was demonstrated at the media and guest robot demonstrations held at the University of Florida’s New Engineering Building on Monday afternoon.

Eric Schwartz, an associate director of the Machine Intelligence Laboratory and a master lecturer in the department of electrical and computer engineering, said he started the demonstration day in order for people to see all the hard work his students had done throughout the semester.

The class, called “Intelligent Machines Design Laboratory,” is made up of half graduate students and half undergraduates, and includes mechanical, electrical and computer engineers, Schwartz said.

He said a class like this allows students to apply the theory they’ve learned in other classes in a hands-on, practical way, and allows students to see the results of their education.

“This is real engineering,” he said. “This is real stuff.”

He also said creating a robot takes a lot of dedication to not only building the machine but also researching and finding the least expensive parts to build the robot, which could appeal to future employers.

 “This is a class that gets people jobs,” he said. “[Employers] are going to ask you about your robot.”

He said some of the most impressive robots this year included John Kurien’s Tim TeBOT, a robot that could play paper football; Timothy Martin’s Woody, which uses a Nintendo Wii remote to detect fire and then extinguishes it while playing music; and the Gator Aider Parking Attendant, created by Jared Bevis.

Bevis, a graduate student of electrical engineering, said he was at a loss for ideas for his robot, but soon realized he wanted to create a robot to control on-campus parking, especially during home games.

The Gator Aider searches out cars that are not orange or blue and picks them up with a magnetic hand and then crushes it, he said. To demonstrate how it would work, cars were made of tin foil and painted in different colors.

A box of crushed red and yellow cars resided among orange and blue ones by the end of the demonstration day.

He said though the project cost him about $500, the experience paid off.

“To be a good engineer, you need to have real hands-on experience,” he said.

But out of all the robots, Coin Frog stood out.

Jonathon Jeske, a first-year graduate student of mechanical engineering and robotics, created the robot, whose name stands for Coin in Fountain Robotic Gatherer.

The robot works like a Roomba, Jeske said, meaning it doesn’t sense the coins on the surface of fountains but instead, changes direction when it hits a barrier, like the edge of a fountain or the light blue children’s pool used at the demonstration.

He said the toughest part of creating the robot was making sure everything was sealed tight and waterproof, especially with delicate materials like the microprocessor that runs the robot. He said he ended up using simple materials like hot glue to make sure all parts of the robot were sealed and safe.

Coin Frog’s first official test came last Tuesday, when he said the robot was placed in the fountain outside the Curtis M. Phillips Center at UF. He mentioned that despite the fountain’s “violent” nature, the robot survived, though it was having some problems at Monday’s demonstrations.

Still, Jeske said he’s happy the robot works and did everything he planned for it to achieve by the end of the semester.

“It was worth the money and the effort,” he said. “This was just an interesting project.”