A robot fish that cleans up water pollution

Cleanup Robots

You’ve chosen to imagine robot fish swimming through waterways and cleaning up pollution. You might want to learn more about cleanup robots, or machines designed to help restore polluted environments. As long as the robot doesn’t accidentally eat your pet goldfish!

Fun Facts:

The European SHOAL project created robot fish that could swim through ports and map pollution in the water.
In 2022, the University of Surrey built a fish-shaped robot that can collect tiny pieces of plastic from water.
In 2016, the first WasteShark prototypes began swimming through Dutch canals to collect floating trash.

Cleanup Robots

LISTEN

We’re exploring cleanup robots, machines that help remove pollution and waste. Some swim through water, while others roll across beaches or enter dangerous places. They can collect trash, clean spills, or handle harmful materials. Robots can reach places that are difficult or unsafe for us, but they still work best when we stop pollution before it starts. After all, even robots don’t want to spend forever picking up our trash!

Fun Facts:

At Lake Tahoe in 2022, volunteers found 30 tiny pieces of litter in one test area. Then a solar-powered robot called BeBot searched the same area and found 300 pieces by sifting through the sand.
In 2010, remotely controlled robots worked about one mile underwater, where people could not safely go, helping inspect and repair equipment around a damaged oil well that caused an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Some cleanup robots go where radioactive waste makes human work dangerous. At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, robots have cleaned debris, collected samples from underground waste tanks, and helped repair equipment.
The SeaClear system uses robots on the water, underwater, and in the air to find and collect litter from the seafloor.
Researchers at the University of Surrey built a fish-shaped robot that can swim through water and collect tiny plastic pieces.

Discussion Question:

If robots can clean our pollution, should people become less careful about making it?

LISTEN

Physical Build:

Build your own pollution-cleaning robot fish using cardboard, recycled containers, bottle caps, and craft materials. Decide what kind of pollution it finds, then invent a mouth, net, filter, sensor, or completely different tool for dealing with it. Show how your robot moves without bothering the plants and animals around it.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Invent three very different robot fish that could help clean a polluted river.”

Choose the idea you like best, change at least one feature, then draw or build your own version. Think about what it cleans, how it moves, and what happens to the pollution it collects.

or a robot bird that eats invasive bugs, like lanternflies?

Bug-Eating Bird

Ornithopters

LISTEN

You’ve chosen to imagine robot birds hunting invasive bugs before they spread. You might want to learn more about bird-like robots, or ornithopters, which fly using flapping wings. Just make sure your robo-bird checks twice before gobbling somebody’s pet beetle!

Fun Facts:

Leonardo da Vinci studied birds and sketched flapping-wing flying machines more than 500 years ago.
Festo’s SmartBird is a robot inspired by a herring gull that can take off, fly, and land using flapping wings.
In 2022, researchers developed an ornithopter that could land by grabbing a perch with a claw.

Ornithopters

LISTEN

This scenario explores bird-like robots, or flying robots with flapping wings called ornithopters. Engineers study real birds to make these robots lighter and more agile. One day, they might help us manage, or maybe even eradicate, harmful invasive species. Eradication means completely removing an invasive species from a defined area, and deciding whether to attempt it requires ecological evidence and community oversight. Plus, robots would need to recognize their targets very carefully. So just make sure your robo-bird checks twice before gobbling somebody’s pet beetle!

Fun Facts:

Around 1505, Leonardo da Vinci studied how birds use their wings and drew ideas for flying machines.
The Smithsonian says the first ornithopters able to fly were small toys built in France during the late 1800s.
Festo’s SmartBird has a wingspan of almost two meters but weighs only about 450 grams, or roughly one pound. Its wings flap and twist, helping it fly more like a real bird.
Researchers at EPFL helped a flapping-wing robot learn another bird trick: perching. It can grab a horizontal perch with a claw and land there on its own.
In 2026, Rutgers engineers described and modeled new bird-like robots whose wings can flex without ordinary motors or gears. The proposed design uses electricity-responsive materials, but current versions of those materials cannot yet power a practical flying ornithopter.

Discussion Question:

Who should decide when an invasive species should be completely removed from a place?

LISTEN

Physical Build:

Design a bug-finding robot bird using cardboard, paper, craft sticks, string, and recycled materials. Give it moving wings and invent a tool for identifying the correct bugs before catching them. You might add a camera eye, bug scanner, gentle grabber, or a completely new idea.

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Digital Build:

With an adult, ask ChatGPT:

“Design a robot bird that finds one invasive insect without bothering other bugs.”

Look at the solution and decide what you would keep or change. Then draw your own robot and show how it can tell its target apart from helpful insects.