What better way to honor the Museum’s S101 submarine exhibit (running from July 28 – August 12 thanks to the OceanGate Foundation), than to have visitors design and operate their own underwater remotely-operated vehicles? ROVs represent a vital aspect of understanding our oceans and other marine environments – they can take measurements of ocean conditions, investigate shipwrecks, take photos of marine life and habitats, and collect specimens for study - and they can do it all in places that are too dangerous for people to go. Over the last two weekends, Museum visitors have built their own ROV frame with supplies from the MATE Center, then with everyday materials like pipe cleaners, mini-butterfly nets, and clothespins, they designed attachments to scoop and gather “specimens” from the bottom of a special tank in the Museum’s Sea Lab. Of course a key part of all scientific endeavors is the experiment, and most learned that driving an ROV is more challenging than it looks, with 3 propellers to operate at the same time. But between seeing the S101 sub, and operating the ROVs, we may have some future submariners in our midst!

Lemaih designs his own ROV...

...and is a successful ROV operator!

Underwater exploration is difficult for some obvious reasons, but it’s so important to understand marine environments. How does pollution affect marine life near the shore? What effect does temperature and salt levels have on the growth of seaweed? Does the amount of seaweed in a given area affect the biodiversity in that area? Upward Bound students have lots of questions about the water surrounding south Florida, and since they can’t really go underwater themselves, they are using remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs). Not only are they going to use ROVs to explore underwater, but these 19 students are going to build the ROVs themselves in groups, then use them in the waters around south Florida to collect data for a science project they’ve designed themselves. With ROV components and instructional materials supplied by Erica Moulton and the MATE (Marine Advanced Technology Education) Center, students have begun to construct some components of their ROVs, including the propellers and all the wiring for the control box. The next steps are building the structure of the ROV itself using PVC pipes and connectors of various shapes and sizes, and then the students will be ready to put the ROVs in the water to explore. Stay tuned to see what the students build and discover!

Students weave wires together

An Upward Bound mentor helps students to solder wires

Wiring the control box of the ROV

Museum staff always work really hard to find ways to inspire young people, and our visitors, in science and the world around them. But we love being inspired by someone teaching us something new too. Recently, Erica Moulton of the MATE (Marine Advanced Technology Education) Center led Museum staff in a workshop to build and design remotely-operated (ROV) vehicles. ROVs can explore underwater environments where it is difficult or impossible for humans to go themselves. They can monitor coral reef systems, explore shipwrecks, or even go underneath ice sheets in Antarctica. They can observe, but also take photos, videos, and even collect specimens. And it takes a lot of people with many different skills to get ROVs from design to operation to observation to results – like electricians, engineers, and all different kinds of scientists, depending on what you want to learn from what the ROV observed or collected. But as we at the Museum always like to remind people, you can do science anywhere, at any time, with simple materials you can find in your kitchen drawers or at the local hardware store. Ms. Moulton, through a National Science Foundation ITEST grant, provided us with several ROV kits and all the materials necessary to build ROVs with our Museum audiences. She uses these same kits to work with schools and teachers on engaging students in ROVs, which then may be entered into regional and national ROV student competitions. At the workshop, we worked in teams to glue little propellers to motors, solder wires to electrical switches, build the frame of the ROV using pieces of PVC piping, and add foam tubing to help with floatation. Now our ROVs are ready to explore, and we are so excited to find all the ways to pass on our inspiration to our Museum audiences, and let others try their hand at ROV building and operating!

Our ROV in a Bag kit

Wiring and soldering the switches on the box to operate the ROV

Adding some foam to our almost-finished ROV frame