High school robotics team works to protect ocean life – MLive.com

STOCKBRIDGE, MI - Bob Richards robotics class at Stockbridge Senior High School operates like a business, says senior Sylvia Whitt.

Whitt acts as a team leader or CEO, while the other students serve specific roles on an assembly line," she said.

The assembly line pumps out cutting edge and award-winning technology. This year, Richards and his students earned a $10,000 grant from Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam to build a deep-sea surveillance robot called the Emperor Micro-Lander.

Stockbridge is one of just 14 schools to receive the honor. They previously won the grant back in 2016 to monitor chemical pollution for the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Richards team also finished eighth in the world at the 2017 International Student Remotely Operated Vehicles Competition.

This is a group that has demonstrated success over time with Mr. Richards, said Anthony Perry, the project liaison for the Lemelson-MIT Program. We knew we could trust that they would produce technology with a practical purpose.

The Emperor Micro-Lander is designed to submerge to 300 feet underwater to take video, images and sensory readings of aquatic life. Most importantly, Richards said, it will be compact enough to travel in small kayaks near coral reefs, which would ground larger survey vessels. The class plans to utilize the Micro-Lander off the coast of American Samoa.

The problem with the big landers, you need a crane...on the back of your research vessel to lower it into the ocean and recover it, Richards said. Just the vessel time itself would be about $40,000 a day... So what were proposing is to use that same type of technology to build a smaller lander.

In Richards 1 p.m. class, each student plays a role with specific crafts. Sophomores Brooklyn Rochow, Hythem Beydoun and Julianna Rook work on an electrical fuse to activate the landers recovery, while fellow students laser-cut the HDPE plastic for a rover that will help the lander navigate the ocean floor.

Mary Lewandowski| MLive.com

Brooklyn Rochow works on building the robot Emperor Micro-Lander during Bob Robert's robotics class at Stockbridge High School on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019. The students received a $10,000 grant to build Emperor Micro-Lander, which will be able to monitor aquatic life in the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.

Whitt said Richards fosters the assembly line environment and trusts younger students to pick up complex concepts. He had her working on batteries before she even reached high school.

When they asked me to be a part of that high school class, I was in eighth grade, Whitt said. I was like, 100 percent, sign me up. I started working on really complicated stuff, but after working on it for a while, it becomes second nature.

Richards previously served 20 years as an ordinance specialist in the Army before Stockbridge hired him to teach in 2002. That military experience has provided him with connections to secure the proper equipment and material to build the aquatic technology.

In addition, they have saved equipment from previous trips to National Marine Sanctuaries off the coast of American Samoa and Palau. Alro Plastics in Jackson has provided high-density polyethylene plastic for the devices buoyancy, and Richards class has earned separate grants such as the Marshall Plan for Talent grant from the University of Michigan.

The material and organization of the class makes it feel like a factory, Whitt said, supplying aquatic monitoring technology needed in the South Pacific.

Off the coast of an island such as American Samoa, extensive coral reefs provide a food web that connects all living things, the EPA said in 2017. Warmer waters bleach the coral, making it inedible for the local fish and various ecosystems, the EPA stated.

The Emperor Micro-Lander can collect data on water temperature, as well other factors such as salinity or pollution. For Whitt, addressing problems like these is where the project starts.

Hey, we have this problem, or we noticed a problem ourselves, she said about the brainstorming process. We think we can do something for that. From there, we keep testing to see if we can get to the point where (our project) can be used.

Richards describes every incoming class as a group on a mission. His Stockbridge students look to be on task to protecting waters that sit 7,000 miles away near American Samoa.

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High school robotics team works to protect ocean life - MLive.com