About the Course
Overview
Soil degradation, land erosion, and landscape damage are environmental issues requiring immediate attention and long-term mitigation strategies. Many proposed solutions have depended on intensive human labor and heavy, large-scale machinery. This work process is challenging, dangerous, and often costly. With the advent of autonomous robotics, we now look at ways to facilitate sustainable land management in various settings using teams of environmental robots.
Project Experience
Students in all projects will work with 2 or more undergraduate tutors. Students will meet via zoom 3 x week in the late afternoon for 45-60 minutes. At other times students will work asynchronously with their tutors and each other via slack.
Sample Problems
Coastal erosion, the loss/displacement of land, and the removal of sediment and rocks are growing concerns for many impacted regions. What are scalable design solutions that can help combat these problems?
Soil erosion is a major ecological issue and a growing challenge in construction. How might we confront this problem with the advent of new surveillance technologies such as drones and other autonomous machines?
Flooding represents one of the world’s gravest natural hazards. Extreme climate events inducing flooding, like severe storms, winter storms, and tropical cyclones, caused an estimated $128.1 billion of damages in 2021 alone. What are new, innovative alternatives to pre existing flood-barrier solutions?
Sample Resources
Romu: A Robot for Environmental Protection
Impact of sediment supply on growing plants in coastal marshes
Louisiana's $2-Billion Gamble: Flood the Land to Save the Coast
Saving Louisiana’s Coast with Recycled Oyster Shells
Sample Output
A “pin-up” presentation (a high-intensity format for sharing and critiquing design) which provides a visual representation or renderings of the proposed innovation.
A documentary film or podcast episode featuring researchers, roboticists, and environmentalists providing new insight and/or participating in discussion and debate.
A low-fidelity prototype of the proposed environmental robot(s) accompanied by diagrams and schematics.
Project Schedule
The week by week schedule will vary somewhat as students are engaged in real world problem solving. Therefore it is never possible to predict exactly what will happen each week. It all depends on where explorations lead the work. But generally the project will look something like this:
Weeks 1-3: Research leading to selecting a problem, forming teams and developing a project proposal.
Weeks 4-8: Forming solutions, deciding on the final project format, and working with tutors to meet project milestones and solicit feedback from tutors and peers.
Week 9: Project presentations.