ROV-based treasure hunts for attracting students towards control and robotics

Organizer: 

Giulia Michieletto, Department of Management and Engineering, University of Padova, Italy

Sponsoring IFAC Bodies:

TC 7.5 - Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles,
TC 9.2 - Systems and Control for Societal Impact

Description:

We intend to host a series of public treasure-hunt events that utilize remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore specially designed underwater gyms. The events are designed to be inclusive, allowing anyone to sign up and participate. Before each event, our team will set up an underwater gym in a confined and publicly accessible body of water, such as a safe bank of a river, channel, lake, or sea. We will strategically place objects and clues on the waterbed, carefully positioning them to be invisible to the naked eye from outside the water. During the events, participants will take turns manually guiding an ROV equipped with a camera. Specifically, they will use the ROV's graphical interface to solve the treasure hunt by navigating through the underwater environment. We will assess the participants' performance in this task and ultimately recognize and reward winners in various categories.

Our ideal target is high and middle school students; at the same time at least some of these events will be open to the general public. More precisely, we plan to perform at least 3 events, one of which will be dedicated to middle school girls (building on top of the “Girls in Control” experience), one to high and middle students, and one open for the general public.

We believe that such ROV-based treasure hunts will captivate students, and hopefully spark a passion for control engineering and robotics through some fun and hands-on experience. Moreover, these events aim to play a role in demystifying control engineering and robotics, and in fostering wider public acceptance and awareness about the transformations that these fields are shaping in our society.