Robotic Dog Toy Takes Top Prize at GA Tech Invention Competition

Georgia Tech’s undergraduate student invention competition went to the dogs.

Christopher Taylor, a mechanical engineering student from Stone Mountain, placed first in the fifth annual InVenture Prize competition for his invention, Chewbots, a line of fully automated robotic dog toys.

"The InVenture prize is the opportunity for me to take my idea and turn it into a real product that helps make happier dogs and happier owners," stated Taylor on the InVenture website.

InVenture Prize @ Georgia Tech is a faculty-led innovation competition for undergraduate students to develop and present inventions to win big prizes like $20,000 provided Google and acceptance into the top-ranked tech university’s startup program.

Students can work independently or in teams to present their inventions to a panel of experts.  The eight finalists of the 164 inventors who entered this year’s competition presented their inventions in a final round, which aired live on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Taylor’s top prize included:

• $20,000 in cash from Google,
• A free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech's Office of Technology Licensing (valued at approximately $20,000), and
• Automatic acceptance to the Summer '13 Class of Flashpoint, a Georgia Tech startup accelerator program.

"It was all just kind of a big blur,” said Taylor in a Georgia Tech release about winning. “I was completely shocked. I don't really have the words to describe it.”

Taylor plans to manufacture the robotic dog toys and use the prize money to create a second prototype to test the product’s durability, according to the GT release.

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AmenoCheck, created by biomedical engineering student Erika Tyburski from Miami, won second place– a $10,000 cash prize and a free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech's Office of Technology Licensing valued at approximately $20,000. AmenoCheck is a point-of-care, patient-operated, standalone, inexpensive, and disposable diagnostic test for anemia due to any underlying pathology.

BioPin, a created by computer science student Steven Wojcio from Forsyth, GA and electrical engineering major Scott Groveman from Roswell, GA, won the People’s Choice Award of $5,000. BioPin is a new way of collecting and verifying PINs that looks at a lot more than just numbers.

- The Georgia Institute of Technology contributed to this story