Water and Wires

Parker’s Underwater Robotics Team

On the first floor, next to the woodshop, is a small workshop full of wires, pool noodles, and cardboard. Inside sit students, working on cables and claws and eating candy. This team isn’t making just any robot. They’re making one that works underwater.

Parker’s Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) team, the Aquatic Colonels, is in its second year. This year, the team participated in one competition on April 27 at Northeastern Illinois University. The competition was hosted by the Shedd Aquarium and the theme was freshwater lakes, dams, and estuaries. The team earned fifth place.
“Every year we do a little bit better,” science teacher Elizabeth Druger said. They meet three times a week and on some Saturdays throughout the second semester. During those times, they learn the necessary skills to build an underwater robot and prepare for the competitions.

At the competition, students have to complete calculations, tether the robot, and drive the robot to complete tasks. They also have to market their robot by creating a poster board. The tasks the robot had to complete included a dam inspection to ensure public safety, inserting grout, and deploying mini robots. The robot also had to measure water quality, find crustaceans, and recover a cannon.

The team uses acrylic, Delrin plastic, and metal to build their robot. They use a Glowforge laser cutter for the acrylic and a Mitsubishi Electric laser cutter for the metal. The team also reuses parts from previous years and receives funding from a Parker Robotics fund.

Each student constructs different pieces of the robot. Freshman Alicia Berger worked on soldering, swimming with the robot, and the fish drop cup, which was held by the claw to complete various tasks. Sophomore Yaaseen Sabir does fabrication and props, a job that requires creating the objects that the robot uses for tasks.
Juniors Maddie Friedman and Sophie Besold worked on computer-aided design (CAD) and fabrication. Junior Claire Levin designed pieces of the robot, did work with CAD, and worked on the fish drop cup. Junior Raven Rothkopf is the CFO and works on the team’s finances and organization, while also working on soldering. Junior Anjali Chandel is the CEO, and she helps with the productivity of the team and the programming of the robot. Senior Amelia Murphy was the lead programmer for the robot and worked on the thrusters, which make the robot turn and move.

Students can learn computer-aided design, circuitry, Arduino controllers, and electronics. Students also learn how to design, prototype, and problem solve. “I’ve learned a lot about the way robots work and how hard it is to get them going and all the complexities there are to simply get something to go forward,” Berger said. “I have so much more appreciation for how hard it is to type on a phone or drive a car.”

The ROV competitions were created by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center as a way to expose and engage students in science, math, engineering, and technology. The teams design, build, and code a robot that is able to function and perform underwater tasks in 15 minutes.

Druger and computer science teacher Aaron Lee wanted to create a space for those who had not previously coded or engineered. Lee had been a part of an ROV team at his previous school. Lee and Druger wanted to create a space for new students to robotics, especially girls, to join. “We initially had one robotics team,” Druger said. Mr. Lee and my goal was to create another robotics team that had a slightly different challenge that would encourage people who wouldn’t normally see themselves as someone who does robotics to join robotics.

“We wanted to change who was coming into robotics because we felt that we were missing out on a fabulous group of kids and we wanted to see what they could do,” Druger said. “We also wanted to encourage them to come and join us because of a lot of what I heard from my current robotics team members is that it was a little intimidating to join the FTC team because a lot of those kids had been doing robotics since middle school.”

The ROV team is unique not only because of the underwater factor, but also because the group is mostly female. The team named their robot Dolly, after Dolly Parton, and also listened to Dolly Parton music. “Our team last year and this year has been predominantly female and that gives us a unique lens on our robot that other people would not bring to the table,” Druger said. “Last year, when our robot flooded, someone mentioned maxi pads. Only an almost all female team would think to use maxi pads in a robot to absorb water.”

To create the robot, the tasks were divided based off of what each student wanted to do. A few students worked on each part of the robot, such as the thrusters, frame, claw, or tube. Other students worked on coding, driving, and props. Students aren’t required to learn every part of building a robot but rather what they want to learn. “For our team, it was created in the beginning to give an opportunity to people who had no experience in robotics,” Besold said. We all get to explore it on our own terms and try whatever we want.

“I joined ROV unable to code and I was under the impression that I wouldn’t be helpful to the team because of my lack of coding abilities,” Levin said. “The fact that anyone can be helpful despite a lack of prior knowledge is really nice.”

Underwater robotics comes with its challenges, such as putting electronics in water and driving the robot underwater. The team visits a pool or uses an inflatable pool for practice. “Last year we spent an entire semester building a robot only to have water get in and destroy everything,” Druger said. “That’s our biggest challenge.”

After the competition was over, the team started to prepare for their Morning Ex on May 29 and redesign the robot to see what they could improve. They reuse the robot each year, adding new parts. “It’s fun to see how far you’ve gone,” Chandel said. In the moment it can be frustrating when you’re building a frame and the pieces don’t fit together or the claw shorts out at the last minute so you have to make a new claw but when you have a final product put together it’s so nice to see all your hard work come to fruition.

“Everyone can engineer a robot,” Druger said. The only thing you need is a desire to build a robot and learn how to do it. If you have those two things, robotics is a perfect fit for you.