A team of Georgia Tech researchers has built an automatic feeding machine for gorillas at Zoo Atlanta that allows the primates to more naturally forage for food. Their ForageFeeder replaces the zoo’s previous feeding protocols, which had staff deliver food to the habitat at set times and locations.

With the new machine, feeding times can be set for different intervals every day. This encourages the gorillas’ natural feeding behavior, giving them additional random foraging opportunities throughout the day.

A New Idea Without a Good Solution

Andrew Schulz was a familiar face at Zoo Atlanta before earning his Georgia Tech mechanical engineering Ph.D. in 2022. He would sit with the elephants most days, studying how the animals stretch their trunks and use them to inhale food and liquids.

In January 2020, Meyerchick made the short walk from the gorilla habitat to see Schulz.

The team tinkered with concepts but then had to pause because of the pandemic. By the summer of 2021, everyone on the team had graduated, so Schulz turned to Maggie Zhang and Nima Jadali. The duo would make the project a reality.

Experience Beyond the Classroom

For the next year, Zhang and Jadali went back and forth with the zoo, testing various methods and parts.

Zhang, the engineer, kept the deer feeder bucket, added some acrylic materials, and printed the remaining parts with 3D and laser printers on campus. It was a trying process.

“I thought I had the skills to pull it off as a third-year student. But then everything kept breaking,” said Zhang, who graduated this month from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “I had already taken ME 2110, which taught me how to implement designs. Struggling on a project outside the classroom gave me new insight into engineering: when you fail, you have to find a passion to fix it that extends beyond getting a bad grade.”

Jadali, the computer scientist, built the electronics, software, and a remote trigger to activate the feeder. He purposely used simple circuits, batteries, and wires to make the machine easy to replicate.

“This project was deceptively difficult,” said Jadali, who also graduated this month. “Often times with my research, I’m the only person who sees and tests much of the code I write. Then it goes into a blackhole after the project ends. This was different; it had to work long after I created it. That’s something I’ve never faced in a research setting.”

Fall Feedings

The ForageFeeder has been in place at the zoo intermittently since August. At first, the gorillas didn’t know what to make of it. During the first feeding, the primates ran away and looked confused when the food suddenly sprayed around their habitat.

Now it’s a regular, but random, part of the day. The primates don’t know when it will activate or what kinds of foods it may deliver.

The feeder is suspended in a tree about 15 feet off the ground. When it’s time to eat, food falls out of the bucket into a tray, where a rotor spreads the treats in a circular pattern, much like a fertilizer dispenser. The food can be distributed as far as 30 feet from the feeder.

“Engineers must always respect the projects we work on, even if they’re for animals,” Zhang said. “I find the zoo projects very interesting because your intended audience can’t provide any feedback. If the device stops working, the animal doesn’t tell you. If they rip it apart, you can’t tell them to stop. It’s good to anticipate the problems of a design and figure out its solutions before it’s sent into the real world.”

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