Autonomous Aquatic Debris Cleanup

The world’s aquatic ecosystems are increasingly becoming dumping ground for countries to leave waste, much of which damages the environment. This project explores electromechanical aquatic cleanup processes and aims to design a low-cost system to remove trash from the water’s surface. I led a team of 3 to design, fabricate, and code this product.

For my senior undergraduate capstone, I designed and implemented a low-cost system to remove trash from the surface of water using electromechanical aquatic cleanup processes. Functionally my team aimed to have an 85% object detection accuracy at a 3 meter range and achieve it on a budget of $700, compared to competing platforms which have an average budget of ~$2,500.

By combining ultrasonic & camera sensing to detect and intake floating debris, and mounting it on a light laser cut wood chassis, I created a system that has 90% accuracy at a 3 meter range and is significantly lighter than competing platforms. This technology has a significant advantage due to its $650 cost, light weight, and highly accurate autonomous detection ability.

This project won Best Overall Project at the CMU Mechanical Engineering Exposition 2022. The final poster with more details is below.