Leveraging Competitive Robotics Experience to Spread Marine Education

Team Inspiration is a robotics team from San Diego, CA, consisting of passionate middle and high school students. We participate in a variety of robotics competitions including FIRST [1], Robocar [2], and RoboSub [3], an international collegiate level competition. In 2020, our team placed #1 against 33 university and high school teams making history as the youngest team to earn this title. In 2021 our team was accepted to compete in RobotX 2022 [4], an international collegiate competition utilizing an autonomous boat and drone working together. In 2011, our coaches created a team and imagined that one day, the elementary school students playing with Lego robots would grow to compete in RoboSub and beyond. Prior to 2019, our team only had experience with ground robots. We took advice and inspiration from experienced teams and connected with marine technology companies to seek mentorship. With the mentorship from professionals, we were encouraged to push ourselves. Through our speaker series, we learned from many professionals from a variety of STEM fields, especially from those in the marine industry. We learned alongside other students about the far-reaching applications of STEM. In 2019, we began our RoboSub journey starting with the basics: A simple remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) constructed by plastic pipes, brushless motors and on-off control box. We climbed up the complexity scale to prototyping on breadboards and using a reliable off-the-shelf Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) from Blue Robotics called BlueROV2 [5]. Learning from these platforms, we designed and built our custom AUV, Orange in 2019. The following year we developed Græy which took Orange’s design and improved upon it by adding more capabilities and sensors to incorporate intersub communication. In 2021, adapting to the virtual season we created an open source Unity simulation of the RoboSub competition environment to help our team and others to test their systems. We strive to apply our experience in RoboSub to benefit the local and global STEM education community. Thus, we began collaborating with Porpoise Robotics [6], a team of former submarine engineers, to design low cost underwater ROV to make STEM education more accessible. The ROV is designed to be an affordable robot which can be used to teach STEM, especially robotics and mechatronics, in schools. Sitting well within a consumer price range, the ROV gives schools the opportunity to immerse their students in underwater robotics. In addition to developing the ROV, we have been working with Porpoise Robotics to create a 2-week curriculum for schools to use with the ROV which will aim to teach students Python, underwater dynamics, mechanics, and electrical integration. By teaching young students about basic principles of marine technology and innovation, we hope to inspire them to explore their interest in the field of ocean engineering. The paper will detail how to inspire more engineers to spread their knowledge and help spark interest in marine education to explore the unknown wonderworld of the ocean.