Submarine Coral Planter: Engineering Project
Center for Entrepreneurship (CEL): Capstone Project, Sophomore Year: Spring, 2020, Prototype #1
Coral Bleaching Research Video (10th grade)
For my CEL Capstone Project, I designed and built an underwater submarine. The goal was to create a robot to plant heat-resistant coral underwater. I wanted to find a solution for the effects of coral bleaching, which damages and kills coral due to excessive heat. This is important, because 30% of our world's coral reefs have died over the past 15 years due to climate change, and 3.2 billion people rely on seafood as their main protein source in order to survive.
Due to the pandemic, I had to work from home on my coral submarine project.
I had to scale back my project, because I didn't have access to materials & tools in the robotics lab. Here I am measuring pipes so that I can cut them to the right size.
So instead, I built a submarine using a robotics sea perch kit.
I used a family friend's pool to test my final prototype.
This is my original CAD drawing of what I had hoped to build if I had access to the lab.
Submarine Coral Planter, top front view
Submarine Coral Planter, bottom view
(Video) Animated CAD design of my Submarine Coral Planter
(Video) Prototype test run of how my underwater submarine would maneuver to plant coral.