SHARK (Student-focused Holistic Aquatic Robotics Kit) Aquatic Soft Robotic STEM Education Kit

Bio-inspired swimming robots have shown promise in a wide range of applications due to their efficiency, speed, and stealth capability. To prepare our workforce for the Uncrewed Underwater Vehicles (UUV) technologies of tomorrow, we need to ensure that unique aspects of bio-inspired Navy specific robots—soft actuators, flexible materials, waterproofing, sensing/controls, periodic motion—are introduced to students throughout their education. Here, Spectral Energies, LLC (SE) and its academic partners at the University of Delaware (UD) propose to continue development of their Student-focused Holistic Aquatic Robotics Kit (SHARK) and its supporting K-12 curriculum to teach students the unique aspects of aquatic robot design through establishing a research-based design strategy and modern scientific standards for learning objectives, culminating in an annual soft-robotics competition. During Phase I, the team developed three soft robotic designs that can be built using SHARK to teach age-appropriate concepts in a hands-on manner. In addition, SHARK was provided to older students to access the creativity and ability to build a robot that can complete Navy relevant mission. During Phase II, SE will continue to develop SHARK, increase the number of lessons plans for each build, scale-up the manufacturing of SHARK, perform learning assessments, and distributed SHARK to a subset of local schools.