Grocery Store Robot: Base

Background

Our project is inspired by VenHub, fully automated smart stores that helps shoppers grab grocery items using robots to grab items. We want to apply this concept into existing bigger supermarkets like Walmart. This project is split into two teams, the base team and the arm team. Our team is responsible for the base.

Objectives

For the the Fall 2025 quarter, we will familiarize ourselves with algorithms we plan on implementing, as well as ROS 2 - the framework for our software.

Starting from week 5, we will have access to the robots themselves and we will start designing mounting brackets for each robot base. The main purpose of this bracket is to attach a robotic arm, but we would like to allocate space to reattach sensors and processors.

By week 1 of Winter 2026, we will finalize our decision on our robotic base, and we will begin learning the software libraries.

The main objective of the base team is to build a robot capable of autonomous localization and optimized path planning without having user control by week 5 of Winter Quarter 2026. We want to have a full working robot collaborating with the arm team by the end of Winter Quarter 2026. 

Team Contact

For any questions or concerns, contact any of our team members below:

William Sjafri: wsatori@uci.edu

Joshua Lee: joshukl4@uci.edu

Andrew Song: ajsong4@uci.edu

Jiyun Lee: jiyunl6@uci.edu

Khanh Toan Nyuyen: toann4@uci.edu

Nicholas Leo: leon1@uci.edu

Sponsor

Professor Solmaz Sajjadi Kia: solmaz@uci.edu