The Story of LABBRA

LABBRA is an acronym honoring six students and pedestrians who were tragically killed by vehicles near the UCF campus. Their names are not shared publicly out of respect for their families.

Benjamin walked and rollerbladed past their memorials often on the way to class. That, combined with his own close calls with cars, is what started all of this.

The Senior Design Team

The team that turned the idea into the first working prototype as a university capstone.

LABBRA senior design team
Benjamin Mingst

Benjamin Mingst

Project Lead, System Architect, Hardware Engineer

Originated the idea, designed the system architecture, led hardware development across all three generations, and rollerbladed 500 miles to fund the first prototype.

Lydia Emmons

Lydia Emmons

Web App & LLM Developer

Developed the web application and built an LLM chatbot that lets users interact with road data using natural language.

Andres Aguirre Rincon

Andres Aguirre Rincon

Simulation & Data Pipeline Engineer

Created the simulation pipeline and built the data generation system used to train the machine learning model.

Caleb Rosenfeld

Caleb Rosenfeld

Machine Learning Architect

Designed and developed the proprietary machine learning algorithm for detecting accidents from sensor data.

The Journey So Far

Aug 2024 to Jan 2025

Idea & Research

It started on the walk to class at UCF. From there: research, crash data, and pitching cities and DOTs to validate the concept and sharpen the direction.

Jan to May 2025

Building the Team

Benjamin recruited Lydia, Andres, and Caleb to build the first prototype together as a senior design capstone.

Recruiting the senior design team
Jun to Aug 2025

The 500 Mile Ride

Benjamin rollerbladed 500+ miles across Florida. The team promoted the journey on social media and ran a GoFundMe to fund the prototype.

500 mile fundraising ride across Florida
Aug to Dec 2025

First Prototypes

Built the first generation hardware, the initial accident detection ML model, and the web application.

LABBRA generation 1 hardware prototype
Jan to Mar 2026

Finishing Senior Design

Built the second generation hardware, collected real traffic data in the field, and completed a full traffic study.

LABBRA generation 2 hardware in the field
Mar 2026 to Present

What's Next

Benjamin is now developing Gen 3 hardware, securing pilot opportunities, and forming the company.

Conceptual render. Not final product.

LABBRA roadside unit render

This Is Just the Beginning

We're going from campus project to real world deployment. If you want to be part of what comes next, whether as a partner, a pilot city, or an investor, we'd love to talk.

Get in Touch Meet the Founder