BookBot is an AI aided wheeled robot that helps librarians and users of libraries to increase their efficiencies and make the experience in libraries flawless. Our product’s focus is to transport returned books to their designated areas. This reduces the time librarians and library staff spend on physical tasks that would preferably be used on promoting a love of learning in such an enriched environment for students and visitors. Based off our own Curzon library, some libraries have unstaffed hours where library users self-serve themselves. BookBot will be most helpful during unstaffed hours, ensuring library resources are back in place for when librarians return to work.
TAKE FIVE
UN SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Empowered and Driven:
Delivering Solutions for Global Issues
Good health and well-being: BookBot automates a task librarians must do on the daily basis: returning books to their designated shelves. By automating these tasks, librarians are freer to take breaks needed, and focus on more important tasks around the library, increasing their productivity and user satisfaction.
Quality education: Automating a common task for librarians allows for greater enrichment throughout the library as well as leaving the librarians and library staff more accessible for any library users or students. The sound regulation function we will implement will also help create a quiet study environment for those who need a focused study area.
Affordable and clean energy: Our product will be made using affordable components, ensuring that the final product will also be affordable itself.
DESIGN STORY
Challenges
Organising books that are returned to and received by the library is a regular activity for librarians. This may be an exhausting task, particularly in larger libraries where boxes of books need to be reshelved. Even while it's doable, automation would help this task and free up librarians' valuable time to interact with patrons more directly.
Solution
The solution is our robot, Bookbot. It isn't just another robot; it's a tireless companion dedicated to enhancing library operations. Bookbot can transport returned books to their designated shelves. Whenever a book is scanned for return, Bookbot will be informed and will start its journey of returning books once it knows the return book box is at full capacity. Every time the robot picks up a book to return it to its designated place, it will scan it with its camera, recognising the book’s destination and will instantly navigate to drop it off. The AI will also be programmed to recognise its destinations through its camera, to make sure that it’s delivering each book to the right place.
Use Case
Based off our own library that has unstaffed hours, our product will aid during those staffed hours to increase efficiency in physical tasks like reshelving books in the library. Our product also aims to help with noise regulation to create a usable study area for those who choose to use it, ensuring a better learning environment.
TECHNOLOGIES
List of Essential Tools and Technologies
THE PROCESS
PROTOTYPE DESIGN
Our product will include features such as noise regulation, AI recognition via camera, and more. Noise regulation will help aid the library become a better study or workspace for users and students. We will include AI recognition to help BookBot recognise each book’s destination as well as to identify which books must be placed where, aided by a website that each library floor map will be imported to. The website will also include a page that will display statistics such as whether the noise level has exceeded the expected boundary, how many times it has been exceeded, and how many successful tasks BookBot has completed. The main feature of the robot is to return books back to their shelves.
Stage 1
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Online Marketing
Creative agency
Web development
PLEDGE
Impact on the market
``Since the 1980s, libraries have been continuously giving up portions of their historic domains. The 1980s saw the replacement of card catalogues with machine-readable catalogues; the 1990s saw the development of the online public access catalogue (OPAC) made possible by the Internet; and RFID allowed library users to check, return and sort books even when a librarian wasn't around. Libraries use technology to give their users better, faster and more reliable services. As of 2024, many libraries are undergoing a significant transition because of the increased integration of technology and the necessity to rethink their roles in the communities they serve.
This new wave of innovation takes a holistic approach to enhancing user experiences and increasing the influence of libraries. The future libraries may have virtual assistants or robots that effectively handle regular activities such as restocking shelves and directing users to the items they need. Bookbot emerges as a solution that aligns with the ongoing trend.
Our product’s specialised focus on addressing the unique needs of libraries ensures its relevance and value in the market. The USP (Unique Selling Point) of our product is that it is not only made for libraries, but it can be generalised and easily integrated into settings such as hospitals and airports as well. ``
RESULTS
FINAL PRODUCT
(We’ll resubmit the form to answer this as we have just started building the product.)
Results 1
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