A group of Primary Schools students aged only 11 have decided to take on the high Schools Students at the upcoming 2016 SUBS in Schools National Final ... because Four young Adelaide boys are demonstrating that age is definitely not a barrier when it comes to taking on complex engineering projects such as designing and building a remote controlled underwater vehicle (ROV). The 11 and 12 year olds call themselves "Team Triton" and they are preparing their entry for the national finals of the Subs in Schools Technology Challenge. The journey began when Eric, 11, heard about the success of an Adelaide high school which won the inaugural National Finals. Although those students were a lot older he believed he and his friends should 'have a go', "I needed to convince my teacher that this was a relevant learning opportunity so I matched my learning to the curriculum and wrote a proposal. I then presented my learning plan to the school community at our ArtsPACes evening and from there the project has gained momentum.” “This competition is usually for high school students however we are building a simple ROV. We want to show that ROV’s can be made by primary school kids and that they can be simple or complex depending on your abilities. We will be the youngest entrants in the competition." Eric asked Jake, 11, Mason, 12, and Griffin, 12, to form the team, "We all have different roles and strengths so together we make an awesome team!" The foursome had to find ways to raise enough funds in order to buy the necessary electronics and components, "I had to engage with industry and look for sponsorship as this project will cost over $1,500 to build and compete at the National Finals. We are almost there", added Eric. Jake took on the role of Design Engineer and was introduced to Autodesk TinkerCAD, "When I started this project I had never heard of CAD before. I started slowly but surely with the tutorials - I didn't even have a mouse! - and they helped so much. I thought I was the best until I was asked to design the ROV and it was hard. I was asked to make it even better with all of the correct measurements and I found that it was not so simple. After three hours I did it. It was beautiful! But when we started building the ROV I realised it was a great design but in reality it was not so good. We started building the ROV for real and it turned out awesomely! We tested it at our pool and was it great!" The next step involved designing a propeller shroud, "I found out I had to design a shroud around the propellers and boy was that hard. I started with the measurements and planned how big an area I would need.” “I had a grid of 10 squares by 10 squares so I knew how much space I needed. I would count the squares. If it needed it to be 5cm big I would count the big squares as 1cm and the smaller squares as 1mm. Then I had to make it 51mm on the inside so I started a trial and error approach. I gave the file to the team manager to 3D print the shroud but it was too thick. When I made the sides thinner it was too big. I got help from a professional engineer and he said I needed to make the rectangles on the side smaller. I did this. It took about 10 minutes. Finally when I was at school the next day I saw it and it was perfect!" Meanwhile, Griffin, the Production & Manufacturing Manager, began studying electronics, "I watched a video and it talked about how to wire the batteries, fuse, DPDT and motor to work together to go forwards and reverse. I wrote down the best way to wire it all up in my notebook.” The students have spent numerous weekends testing their ROV in a backyard pool and say they're on course for the national finals. The latest addition to the underwater craft is a waterproof camera sending back a live video feed. “Putting the wires into the control box was pretty hard to do. I had colour coded wires for the motors. The left motor was the left switch and the wires were white and black. The right motor was the right switch and the wires were red and blue. The mid motor wires were green and yellow. We started working on our control box which connects to the power source. It uses the switches to transmit current to the ROV engines." "We found it was very hard to follow all of the requirements and our design ideas. For example, our ROV had to fit in a 400mm space but it had to have a 200 X 100mm void. We found this very hard to work around." Mason took on the role of Marketing Manager and his responsibilities included their logo, uniforms, a website (www.tritonrov.com) and social media news feeds. Their exploits have already caught the attention of the media with the ABC’s Behind The News camera crew coming out to their school for a three hour shoot. The interview was aired on the ABC in November ... The experience to date has left the boys far from overawed. They have relished the challenge and in the words of Griffin, "Team Triton can do anything if we put our minds to it." We will continue to follow the progress of "Triton" as they compete in Adelaide in December. The following video has been provided by the ABC Adelaide - 'Behind the News' team. |