A big year for a product developed in Auburn is about to get bigger.
Tennibot, billed as the world's first autonomous robot tennis ball collector, is the focus of a campaign launching today on Kickstarter.
What's more, Tennibot is shipping this year and can now be purchased with early-bird discounts during crowdfunding, according to its inventor.
"It's a very exciting feeling," said Haitham Eletrabi, the founder and CEO of Tennibot, Inc. "After all this work, it is finally getting to a point of where people can now order one. It's taken time because we want to make sure we have something solid that we're proud of, that's of the highest quality."
It took about a year-and-a-half for Eletrabi and a team of about six people, beginning 2016, to work out the design requirements.
Eletrabi earned an MBA and a doctorate in civil engineering from Auburn. While there, he came up with the idea for Tennibot after growing tired of picking up tennis balls on the court. When he went looking for some kind of product to collect them, he realized it didn't yet exist, he said.
Eletrabi describes it as "a robotic personal ball boy that never gets tired."
Tennibot uses sensors, computer vision and algorithms to detect, locate and collect tennis balls. A fisheye camera panoramically scans the court. The Tennibot's on-board computer analyzes the information collected, and it moves toward the ball.
Tennibot can collect up to 80 balls, works on hard and clay courts and operates off a battery that can last up to five hours. It can work with one or more players in multiple scenarios, such as practice or games.
Over the last year, Tennibot has garnered the Tennis Industry Association Innovation Award and the 2018 Honoree Award from the Consumer Electronics Show. The device also got attention from Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. It also won the regional Alabama Launchpad competition in Auburn.