Young Engineers’ WaterBot Project

In line with the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0), Malaysia has emphasized the transformation in education to produce graduates with skills that align to the requirement for IR 4.0.

“Education 4.0 is suggested to affect all the domains (Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor) in the Bloom’s model. In the cognitive domain, Application, Analysis, Evaluating and Creating will become way more important relative to the lower level cognitive skills.”

“With a rising level of complexity, it will be highly important to impart deeper learning. This can be achieved with the increased use of blended, project- and scenario-based, and practice-oriented learning. Innovation being key to success, experts suggest that maker space, which is characterised by open source innovation and learning-by-doing, should be utilised as a tool to train graduates.”

New Straits Times, 4^th April 2018 [online]

The elements of digitalization and Internet of Things (IoT) in accordance to the advanced technology in application such as automation and robotics have gained much attention in the current industry and application. Aligning to the idea of maker space, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia (HWUM) has established a maker club (MakerZ). MakerZ serves as an innovative maker platform for HWUM undergraduates to enhance the design thinking and producing innovative design solution.

As Heriot-Watt University embraces 2018 the Year of The Sea, MakerZ club in Heriot-Watt University Malaysia campus has come up with an ingenious idea of creating an underwater multipurpose robot named the Watt-ER Bot.

Watt-ER Bot is a 2 year project, with the end product being able to cruise around and under water to monitor the water quality (e.g. dissolved Oxygen Level, pH level, Water Temperature, Air Humidity and Air Temperature) of a lake. Lake monitoring system has gained attention in evaluating the level of nutrient and pollution on lake to maintain a healthy ecosystem. Most lake monitoring systems consists of devices located at several spots of the lake to capture the real-time data which gives limitation in positioning. Watt-ER Bot will be able run autonomously to collect data of the water quality and powered by sustainable energy. This allows another field of research on the renewable energy which involves solar, wind and even tidal from the lake. Our team consists of 15 enthusiastic engineering undergraduates from different disciplines, who always dream big to build the first water robot that could also value to our final year research.

For this campaign, we would like raise fund for our Phase 1 of the Watt-ER Bot. In this phase, the robot will be able to cruise in the lake with auto and manual control mode, equipped with obstacle avoidance sensors. Tables 1 and 2 show the cost breakdown and gantt chart for the first phase respectively.

Table 1: Cost of Components

Table 2: Gantt Chart for Phase 1

Appreciate your kind support so that our team can realize our dream to see the Watt-ER bot operating on our campus lake.