How a Teen Built a Robot to Feed the Homeless | UR2025 Banquet Talk
Ethan Hong, a rising junior at Geffen Academy at UCLA and robotics lab intern, discusses Food Angel, his food delivery robot for people experiencing homelessness, at the UR2025 banquet.
In this talk
- 1:12
Robotics with a human purpose
Hong says his early exposure to robots through his father, a UCLA robotics professor, shaped his view that robotics should help people. He also describes contributing to the vision system for Artemis, a soccer-playing robot that won the RoboCup world championship, and presenting a paper on that work.
- 3:23
Designing Food Angel around people
After moving to Los Angeles as a child, Hong noticed the scale of homelessness there. He connects homelessness with food insecurity and points to stigma, limited staff, and scarce resources as challenges for food organizations. Food Angel was built to explore whether robots could help deliver food and raise awareness, not to solve food insecurity on its own.
- 6:40
Building the first prototype
Hong contacted local food organizations, and a food bank executive invited him to tour the LA Food Bank. What he learned there helped guide the design: an outdoor four-wheel rover carried food in a cardboard box, with a handwritten sign and smiley face to make its purpose clear and the interaction approachable.
- 9:39
Gary’s feedback and the reason to continue
During an early field test, a nearby man named Gary noticed the robot, read its sign, and took food from the box. Hong interviewed him afterward and used his feedback to inform future versions. Gary’s emotional response to receiving chips reminded Hong that engineering choices matter most when they help people.
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