Last Chance to Vote in the Pitch Your Prototype Challenge

Voting in the Pitch Your Prototype challenge (a contest organized by Make: and Cornell University in which the winning individual or team will take home $5,000 to continue development of their prototype) will close at midnight on Monday.

To cast your vote, look at the full gallery of submissions, and read the rules to the contest, visit this page. According to the contest guidelines, voters should consider a project’s applicability to a real world problem (30%), commercial viability (30%), originality (25%), and the quality of submission materials and documentation (%15).

Here are some entries that have caught our eye:

• Swoon is a kitchen appliance that produces fresh, frozen treats like ice cream or sorbet. The developers say that they would use the Pitch Your Prototype winnings to bring the device to market.

• The Hard Candy chassis is an open source, holonomic drive platform. It serves as an adaptable robot body that can support more than 30 pounds and be controlled by a major development system like Mindstorms or BrickPi.

• The WALRUS rover is an expandable mobile platform meant for disaster relief. The developers say their robot is durable, amphibious, and could be used to rescue injured persons, disable bombs, or scout dangerous areas.

• The developers of NullSpace VR say that their haptic feedback technology could pave the road to the next frontier of immersive gaming. Their prototype suit is a jacket and gloves that’s divided into 30 feedback zones to let players experience virtual objects and environments by touch.

• Autonomous agricultural robot Nellie is an early prototype of a system that would pluck weeds directly out of the ground instead of using pesticides. Developer Mike Rigsby says that if he wins, he’ll use it to develop a next-generation Nellie, with a heavy duty chassis, that will travel between rows of plants to automatically weed.

• SmartPour is a beverage dispenser for keg-based drinks. The developers say that their prototype keeps the settings at an optimal level to prevent excess foam and wasted pours.