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Building and Testing the Trash Terminator
Questions: How can we make an underwater robot that picks up plastic bags? How can we design different claws to see which one works the best, and pick up the trash the fastest? Hypothesis: If we use the stabber it will be the most effective claw because it will take the least amount of time to collect the trash. Materials and Methods: Materials: 1. Angelfish ROV (remotely operated vehicle) kit 2. PVC (PolyVinyl Chloride) pipes (½ in diameter) 3. Switch control box 4. Pool noodle 5. Tinkercad / 3D printer Methods: 1. See instructions for how to build robot 2. Build claws you want to use on your robot 3. Gather all claws you will be testing 4. Attach motors onto the robot 5. Make sure you have a pool or body of water to test in 6. Bring all materials down to your testing site: your robot (with motors attached), claws, and plastic bags, cans, and other trash you will be testing with 7. Attach the claw you will be testing first 8. Make sure the motors work and the cords are attached to the battery. 9. Lower the trash terminator into the water with claw and motors attached 10. Make sure it has an even buoyancy and doesn't tip a certain way 11. Insert the trash you will be attempting to terminate into the pool 12. Make sure it is far away enough from the robot that you can see how effective it will be in a big pool or in the ocean 13. Try to pick up trash and record your data: type of claw, how long it takes to collect the trash, observations (how easy it it to operate and collect trash) 14. When you have enough data, lift the terminator up and switch claws 15. Repeat steps 8-14 until you have tested all the claws 16. Take all materials back and put them away: detach motors and claw, put away robot, claws, plastic bags, cans, and other trash you tested with 17. Use the data to determine which claw works the best! You can test more than once, and make more claws to test out! Results:
RILEY SULLIVAN DATA - below 
MORGAN RICHARDS DATA - below
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Discussion:
Our DEEP project goal was to build an underwater robot that helped reduce the amount of trash in our oceans. We designed a robot that could grab floating trash with a claw and then bring it back to land where the human was. There it would be properly disposed of. We built three different claws that were able to pick up trash. We tested each one of them three different times, with each kind of trash, to find out which claw was most effective. In our experiment, we 3D printed three types of claws: the stabber, the circlaw, and the netclaw. We tested these claws when picking up a big plastic bag, a piece of net, and a small piece of trash (a small pirates booty bag/hot Cheetos bag). All of these pieces of trash were floating on the surface of the water. To make sure our data was as accurate as possible, we tested each combination of claws and trash three different times, with three different drivers. Our hypothesis was, if we use the stabber, it will be the most effective claw because it will take the least amount of time to collect the trash. However, our data showed that the circlaw was most effective in picking up the plastic bag and the net. Also, the netclaw was most effective in picking up small pieces of trash. Therefore, the stabber was the only claw that was not the most effective in picking up any kind of trash. During our experiment, our error occurred when we accidentally stabbed the side of the plastic pool three different times. We partially solved this error by putting up a wooden board where the stabber would end its journey of getting the trash and bringing it back to us, humans. Another thing we did to try and solve this problem was by being very careful. If we were to redesign our experiment, we would make the net claw bigger, in hopes that it would be able to collect more and larger pieces of trash. We would also try and put some sort of soft cap on the end of the stabber so that it would not poke any more holes in the side of the pool. If we had more time to work on our project, we would suggest for further experimentation that we make more claws, such as a manipulator claw. We would also aspire to try and design our robot differently so that it would be able to collect pieces of trash underwater. Lastly, we would try and make a net beneath our robot where we could store the trash we collected. We would do this so we wouldn’t have to drive the robot back to the human every time. By doing this experiment, we learned that we could use the digital tool tinkercad to design different claws. We also learned how to use a PVC pipe cutter. In addition, we learned how to build and control a robot. Factually we learned that trash pollution is a very drastic problem in our world. We realized that this problem is too big for humans to do by themselves, so they need mechanical help. This and Peanut, a sea-turtle whos life was changed forever by the trash pollution in our oceans, was the reason for our project. Furthermore, we learned that hard work and teamwork is very important when facing challenges. The times we got frustrated was mostly when we were testing for long periods of time. We conquered these emotions by pushing through, working together, and communicating with each other. LINDSEY LAURENCE DATA - below
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