It is over six feet tall, weighs 460 pounds, costs over $15,000 and is artificially intelligent. And it does a fair job of tending bar.

It is Cybot, and it has brought international attention to Iowa State and the students responsible for its construction.

After five years of effort, Team Cybot finally showed off the result of its hard work in early August at the American Association of Artificial Intelligence Convention at Portland, Ore., which was attended by an international array of schools and organizations.

Team adviser Chad Bouton, a graduate student in engineering mechanics, began work on the project in 1991 as a sophomore. “It was a slow process, putting Cybot together,” Bouton said.

That process involved cobbling together Cybot’s components. Interested companies and individuals — including professors and alumni — donated components and money for Cybot’s construction.

For example, Cybot’s frame was built entirely from scratch. Fabrication of the metal components took place at Barber’s Metal Fabricating, a local company which also donated the frame parts.

Cybot’s arm, originally used on an older ISU robot named Zorba, came from a robotics company which went bankrupt. The arm is the most expensive Cybot component, costing approximately $6,000 after a discount.

While the construction process was long and difficult, assembling and testing Cybot gave the team members important hands-on, team-oriented engineering experience. “We had to solve a lot of real-world, crazy problems,” said Matt Kettler, a senior in computer engineering who joined the team last spring. “We aren’t restricted strictly to hardware or software problems, and we got a lot of team programming experience,” added Kettler.

Kettler was primarily responsible for fixing the bugs in the arm’s software controls, a project he laughingly said required “too much work and too much time.” Kettler estimates that he spent upwards of 20 hours per week in the lab preparing Cybot for its appearance in Portland.

Ralph Patterson III, assistant professor of electrical engineering and the team’s faculty adviser, praised the work of students such as Kettler in getting Cybot up and running. “They are the people who really did the work. They are just an outstanding group, especially the kids who worked this summer.”

Kelly Rowles, a senior in electrical engineering, agrees. “Student effort is what propelled the program,” he said.

Team Cybot did not enter their robot in the competition phase of the convention, Patterson said, because Cybot is not yet mature enough for the competition. But they did put Cybot through a live demonstration.

Cybot was programmed to find its way around a room and offer people it met a drink, which it then poured and served. Cybot uses sonar (sound waves) to find obstacles and avoid them and to find potential drink customers. It is fully autonomous, has rudimentary intelligence, and it communicates by voice.

A library of acceptable user commands guides Cybot’s actions, and it answers by voice as well. “If Cybot asks ‘Would you like something to drink?’ and you say ‘No thank you,’ it moves on. If you say ‘Yes, please,’ it will pour you a Coke,” Patterson said.

The highlight of Cybot’s convention activity occurred when it poured a drink for actor Alan Alda, who was covering the convention for the television science program “Frontiers.” Patterson said the program is scheduled to air in November.

Team Cybot is now an official campus organization, but funding and material support for upgrades still present major challenges. “Apparently, we have to be an official club for one full year to get funding,” Bouton said, and upgrades are needed to bring Cybot up to competition status, such as a new central computer. The current processor is an old 80486, and an upgrade to a Pentium is required to run more advanced artificial intelligence programs.

Opinions of departmental support vary. Patterson praised the electrical engineering department for donating a large room for lab space, but he is worried that the new dean of engineering, James Melsa, is not as excited as former Dean David Kao, who was an enthusiastic supporter. “I don’t think we’ve impressed [Melsa] yet,” Patterson said. However, “the dean will recognize the need for greater support soon,” Bouton said.

A coming “Robotics Alliance” may provide greater support. The Cybot project has brought together the computer science, electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering departments in an unofficial union of departments interested in elements of robotics design.

“We hope that it becomes official,” Bouton said, allowing for greater emphasis on and development of robotics projects in the future.