Most people see a turtle skim across a pond and move on. Evan Budz, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student from Burlington, Ontario, saw one and thought, what if a robot moved like that?
That question became BURT, short for Bionic Underwater Robotic Turtle, an AI-powered aquatic robot that mimics the swimming motion of a snapping turtle instead of the loud, turbulent propellers of most underwater drones. BURT has four flippers to move. The front two are for propulsion and the rear two are for steering and stability.
According to a ScienceDirect review on autonomous robotic systems for coral reef monitoring, the integration of visual data with AI and machine learning allows for real-time analysis of coral health, species distribution, and bleaching detection at scale. BURT is doing just that, but in a body that will leave the environment as undisturbed as possible.
