A Low Cost Educational ROV Platform for Promoting Engineering among young students: ROV R2B2, new challenges

The presented work describes the new design features of an educational robotics project addressed for young students and carried out at the Underwater Robotics Research Centre of the University of Girona (UdG). The project is about secondary school students building an underwater exploration robotic vehicle using low-cost materials. Its main objective is to promote engineering interest among students and motivate them to direct their future studies towards engineering degrees. The core activity started in 2008 is permanently adapted to new requirements and the presented article describes two challenges which are being under development at the date of presentation of this paper. Authors expect to integrate these challenges into the core activity during the next year’s season, starting April 2024. The first one is a new online remote operation platform which aims to bring engineering and education to everyone, far beyond the limits of the university underwater facilities. The second presented challenge is about linking aerospace sciences using educational robots by designing new underwater vehicles and missions to fulfill NASA space operations which involve extravehicular activities. The paper describes the core activity, the challenges and some results of the activities carried out to the date.