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LeTourneau University students create robot to combat geese on the links

The robot is designed to drive geese of the fairways and greens of a golf course and save thousands in damage.

LONGVIEW, Texas — Everyone remembers the infamous gopher in 'Caddyshack.' However, it is a different animal causing problems on the links at courses across the country.

Each year, geese cause thousands of dollars in damage to courses.

"On PGA golf courses, they can cause up to $250,000 a year in damages from just destroying the terrain to pooping everywhere, and they have to spend a lot of money to try to remove these geese," Byron Coffin, a senior computer engineering student at LeTourneau University, said.

Coffin and his classmates came up with an unusual solution to the problem: A robot.

Twelve students created the robot over the course of eight months and named the robot prototype Steve. 

Steve drives itself, is able to identify the geese with its camera and can go roughly ten hours before needing to be recharged.

"Our goal is to patrol and chase them away during nesting season," Coffin said. "If there's a hindrance in the area that they're going to try to nest they'll go look elsewhere."

One of the cool features is Steve is amphibious, giving it the ability to chase geese into the water.

"Waterproofing it: That was one of our major hurdles," LeTourneau senior Taylor Adamek said. "When you stick a lot of electronics like in the water, you get some problems."

Another problem that needed to be solved was how does it identify a goose from other animals. To solve the problem, the students showed their prototype roughly 8,000 pictures of geese so it knew exactly what it was chasing.

While the final model has not yet been completed, the plan is to make the robot affordable for courses to use across the country.

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