White Rock Lake, Dallas, Texas, USA

My name is Daniela and I am a fourteen-year-old freshman who has recently started high school at Dallas International School. I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and frequently traveled throughout my early life - when I was three years old, for example, I traveled to Guangzhou, China with my mother due to her field of work. In my youth, I developed an affinity for local wildlife that stayed with me throughout the rest of my years - from my earliest days, I could be found in forests and parks, admiring local flora and fauna. Even before I started school, I took a similar interest in artistic and technological design, and living in a populated, modern area inspired me to conceptualize my own set of futuristic designs united by a common theme - sustainability and animal welfare. In elementary and middle school, my focus shifted mostly to physical art, and though animals and natural details frequently made an appearance in my early projects and pieces, these were infeasible in terms of real-life possibilities and rarely included a technological aspect. Many of my early projects were artistic portrayals of existing subjects, and creating a truly functional and tangible product of my ideas seemed more like a distant dream, with my occasional acts of service not stretching far until I transferred to Dallas International School in the eighth grade. The school had, among many other enriching subjects and after school activities, a course on technology and engineering and an after school soccer drone building club which not only revitalized my interest in technologically oriented design but also urged me to put my developments to good use - what good was an idea if it was only helpful to one person? I began the search for projects and competitions with which I could not only bring my ideas to fruition but which also allowed for my concepts to have some use to the general public, among which I discovered the Nicodemus Wilderness Project. While reading through the organization's mission, history, and ongoing projects, I found myself deeply impacted by and tied into the project's goals - the project gave the perfect opportunity for developing youths to apply themselves and their ideas in the name of a fair cause, connecting thousands each year by a single, common set of goals. I chose to embark on my own Apprentice Ecologist Initiative journey to apply and develop my skills for the benefit of an already dwindling population whose survival is imperative to that of mankind.

According to a study conducted in 2022, Texas ranks first in the nation for polluted waterways, with 17 million pounds of waste released into local waterways per year as of 2020 (Mone 1). A study conducted in 20 of Austin's creeks at intervals of 30 feet in the same year shows that not only does garbage come from a plethora of legal and illegal sources, making its prevention extremely difficult, but that large mounds of waste tend to gather in one area, as 76% of the total amount of waste observed was found in only 10% of the surveyed areas (Clamann et al 1). After its release into waters, waste often accumulates at the surface of waterways and eventually sinks to blanket the beds of lakes and rivers, often disintegrating into microplastics of sizes between "five millimeters and [ ... ] 20 microns," (Comme 1) or blocking sunlight from the bottom of the waterway, harming the local population of organisms that live within the waters and depend on sunlight as a source of sustenance. Not only does the abandoned garbage gather in areas upon which thousands of different species may depend for survival, but it may also be accidentally ingested or find itself attached to the bodies of larger wildlife, posing the risk of intestinal blockage and limited range of motion that may become fatal or make individuals easier targets for predators if left untreated for extended periods.

White Rock Lake is a large, 1,254-acre body of water located in Northeast Texas. It stems from White Rock Creek and empties into the Trinity River, and though it is not the most popular waterway on Texas soil, it is a popular attraction for tourists and residents alike ("About White Rock Lake" 1). Because of its popularity and proximity to nearby neighborhoods and civilization, it has become a victim to waste dumping and a site of garbage accumulation, with litter grouping so heavily together after rains due to runoff that even boats and kayaks may find themselves stuck in the midst of the lake. Not only does this decrease the attractiveness and safety of the lake in terms of human use, it also deeply affects the lake's ecosystem, as the lake is home to "33 types of mammals [...], 54 varieties of mammals, [...] 20 kinds of amphibians [...] 217 species of birds [...] [and] 19 kinds of fish" ("About White Rock Lake"1), all of which depend on the lake and its resources for survival. Though recent cleaning missions and public vigilance have aided in maintaining the state of the frequently visited body of water, the accumulation of garbage often cannot be fully purged and is slowly eating away at the health of its inhabitants - with its current conditions, it may soon become uninhabitable for nearby humans and animals alike, forcing its niche ecosystem to migrate and potentially causing the extinction of a myriad of diverse organisms.

When I began to plan for my project at the beginning of 8th grade in August of 2022, my first course of action lay in setting several goals, boundaries, and success criteria for my project. Due to the fact that I could not safely transport my project to my apartment due to its size and the amount of materials that I was already required to have on hand as well as the fact that it was to be kept in the school's technology lab to prevent damage, I knew that I could only work on the project on school days. Additionally, I was required to limit the time dedicated to my Apprentice Ecologist Initiative project to two hours per week (namely 3:30 - 5:30 P.M.) on Mondays not only due to time constraints caused by after school activities on the other days of the week but also to account for the time that I would need to complete my classwork sufficiently after school. Setting such time constraints before I started my project allowed me to regulate its complexity when designing my drone by estimating the time that each of its parts would need for completion (taking into account the time during which I would need to learn and practice new skills such as soldering and coding and also the time during which I would test each individual part and/or a prototype of several parts before adding on the rest), dividing the total time into two-hour slots, and aligning these slots with the work periods which I had set aside for myself. This allowed me to see what it was that I could and could not do with the time constraints that I had imposed, thereby allowing for my initial sketches and ideas to be more feasible and saving time that would have been used creating and testing parts that were unnecessary, did not fit my skill level at the time or took time away from the crucial parts of my project.

Only when I had set firm time constraints for myself did I begin to expand my initial idea and delve into the functions that I wished for it to perform. I had already decided to create a water-dwelling drone at the beginning of the year, but only after setting appropriate time constraints did I plan out the details of its function. I began to consider such details as its source of power, the parts which it would use to clean the lake's water of garbage and the way in which I could counter the weight of the drone's base so that it would be able to comfortably float on water for the entirety of the cleaning trip that I was to make when it had been completed. I made sure to consult our school's technology instructor, Mr. Douglas Lee, at this point to ensure that I had a sufficient plan for each of the drone's crucial parts and that these plans were feasible, as I had never truly built a drone before. Mr. Lee acted as my project supervisor, answering questions and explaining to me the required orientations, sizes, attachments, and calculations that needed to be applied to and/or performed in order to complete a fully working water-dwelling drone. His feedback and experience allowed me to also hone in my goals and the aspects of my first design to reasonable levels, leaving space for the soldering, wiring, and addition of internal parts that was to come when I would eventually set up the drone's internal components.

After I was sure of my drone's full function and each of its parts, I constructed a list of the digital and physical materials that I would need for each part of my project. I made sure to include not only the main materials needed to construct my concept (e.g. the PVC pipes and end caps needed to construct the pontoons, the net to collect garbage, the metal frame, the solar panels, the motors, wire cables, clamps, the batteries, and the receiver) but also intangible materials (e.g. TinkerCad software to construct models of the connectors that I would be using to connect my frame and my motors to the pontoons, wiring diagrams, Arduino Cloud to construct and save my code and soldering tutorials) and tools that would be used to sufficiently complete each of the processes used to create the parts of my drone (e.g. a soldering set, wire cutters, pliers, silicone to seal the pipes with end caps, etc.). When I was sure that I had accounted for each material, I showed the list to Mr. Lee and asked if I could borrow some of the tools that I had listed from the technology classroom when I began to work on the parts during which they were required, seeing as he already had many of these tools readily on hand as well as leftover scraps from past projects. It was from him that I got many of the tools and materials needed for the first steps of my project, allowing me to begin truly building my water-dwelling drone.

Near the end of August, I began the creation of my project by measuring the PVC pipes that were soon to become my drone's pontoons as well as the metal bars used for its frame. After recording these measurements, I created a TinkerCad account and, after watching several tutorials about the program's controls and consulting Mr. Lee to ask for aid in maneuvering the program, I modeled the prototypes of my motor connectors, frame connectors, and pontoon brackets.

After I imported the motor connector into the file with the brackets to test that they all fit, I used a 3D printer housed in the technology classroom to then print out eight of the bracket prototypes, two of the motor bracket prototypes and two of the frame connector prototypes. I then fit the brackets onto my capless pontoons and attempted to screw them on with the motor connectors and fit the frame connectors around my metal frame bars to ensure that the prototypes fit and would be functional. Since there were some misalignments in my first batch of prototypes, I modified their models, reprinted, and retested them until they fit without issue.

When I had a set of sufficient brackets and motor connectors, I gathered the set of metal bars that would comprise the frame onto which the boxes containing my drone's inner mechanics and the solar panel powering it would rest, screwing the bars together and employing triangular 90° connectors to create a roughly rectangular base.

I also sealed the PVC pipes which would become the pontoons of my water-dwelling drone with end caps using silicone, ensuring that there were no holes in the final pontoons and leaving them to dry for 24 hours. When they were fully dry, I attached the pontoons to the respective side of the metal frame using the final brackets and frame connectors and screwed in the motor connectors below the brackets, attaching the motors to the posterior underside of my water-dwelling drone using the motor connectors.

Additionally, I screwed a pair of waterproof plastic boxes between the first and second horizontal bars of my frame. The left, clear box would hold the RC receiver and Arduino microcontroller (responsible for receiving signals from the drone's remote control and processing them into reactions from the motors), the voltmeter and ammeter, the low voltage disconnect (responsible for causing the drone to shut off in the event of extremely low voltage to prevent significant damage to the batteries and overexertion), the main power distribution board (responsible for allocating the batteries' power to each of the required destinations), the toggle switch to turn on the watercraft and the 5V buck converter. The right, opaque box would hold two 6V batteries wired in series to give power to the water-dwelling drone, a solar controller, and the cables that would connect the internal solar controller to the external solar panels.

After I had affixed the boxes and the large wiring boards inside of them (which would allow me to later attach the aforementioned components to the inside of both boxes and wire them accordingly) to the metal frame of my water-dwelling drone, I started on the next essential step of the project: learning to solder in order to create the main power distribution board. I borrowed a soldering set from Mr. Lee's classroom and watched several online tutorials before beginning to solder for the first time, starting with the main set of wires on the power distribution board and later the male and female connectors at their ends, following the required pattern: a negative wire (in black), two positive wires (in red) and another negative on the upper and lower ends of the power distribution board. I was sure to wrap each wire's connection to the board in heat shrink in order to prevent a short circuit if any of the wires were to meet.

After verifying that my work was clean and that the final soldering work could not cause any short circuits, I took the remote control which would be controlling the drone, its receiver, and the Arduino microcontroller from their respective boxes and wired the pins of the receiver to the digital pins of the Arduino to allow signals to pass from the receiver to the microcontroller. I then opened the school-provided Arduino Account that each eighth grader was provided with and began to program the Arduino, correlating each of 6 channels to a switch direction on the controller (e.g. uc2, or channel 2, was correlated to the vertical position value of the remote control's second joystick, which controlled pitch, meaning that the drone would pitch upwards or downwards depending on the vertical position value of the remote control's second joystick, which would be transmitted to the receiver and processed by the Arduino). I then used several lines of "Serial.print" code so that each channel's position value, when received and transmitted to the Arduino, would be printed in the monitor section of the Arduino Cloud. After checking that the receiver was receiving signals and transporting them to the Arduino for printing, I defined the pins that would connect the motors to the Arduino and used several if-statements to indicate the proper motion of the motors when each channel reached a range of values, where 1000 µs was the minimum value, 2000 µs was the maximum, and 1500 µs was the middle value (at which the motors would stop). I programmed each of the channels individually so that a value of fewer than 1480 µs would cause the motors to adjust themselves for backward movement/movement to one side, a value greater than 1520 µs would cause the motors to adjust themselves for forward movement or movement to the other side, and a value of 1500 µs would cause the motors to stop entirely.

When I had checked the completed code for errors and saved it, I soldered three 3.5mm male connectors onto the ends of the motor wire and connected the shorter wires of the motors to a longer section of cable through a set of waterproof connectors to allow for the motors to be connected to the Arduino within the clear acrylic box at the top of the watercraft. After successfully increasing the length of the cable by splicing the wires of both motors with a cable through a waterproof connector, I connected the cable to the Arduino, plugged the Arduino into my laptop, and did a final run of the code to ensure that the motors were moving as expected.

I then continued to work on the project's wiring, sorting the remaining parts by their intended boxes as mentioned above and soldering paired-end connectors onto the Low Voltage Disconnect, voltmeter, and two wires near the center of the power distribution board. I joined the left paired-end connector of the Low Voltage Disconnect with the power distribution board's end connector, connected the Low Voltage Disconnect's second paired-end connector to that of the voltmeter, and used a wiring block connector to join the voltmeter's wires with the positive wire of the switch and the negative side of one of the two 6V batteries that I was required to wire in series. I then joined the second battery's positive side with the unused wire of the toggle switch and connected the two batteries, effectively wiring them in series to provide the 12V needed to power the watercraft. I also fit the 5V buck converter into its place on the main power distribution board before joining the thinner red and yellow pair of wires of the voltmeter to the toggle switch, thereby finishing the wiring of the clear box. I set the power distribution board, first voltmeter, Low Voltage Disconnect, and toggle switch into the clear box and screwed them down into the box's wiring board after reviewing my wiring and checking for any mistakes, ensuring that the pair of batteries were connected by wires that were long and durable so as to allow them to connect to some aspects of the clear box from within the opaque box. I also drilled two holes into the posterior, shorter side of the box, one into the rightmost, longer side of the box, and another into the leftmost, long side of the box. The holes in the posterior allowed for a connection between the motor wires and the wires of the Arduino, while the hole on the right side allowed for the installation of the toggle switch, and the hole on the left side allowed for the batteries, which would be in the opaque box, to connect to the toggle switch and voltmeter in the clear box.

As for the opaque box, I fixed the batteries into the wiring board and also attached the wires of the solar controller to the respective sides of both batteries, ensuring that they remained in series and that their connection to the parts of the clear box was maintained. I then wired the solar controller to the positive wire of a second voltmeter and used a wiring block connector to attach the negative wire of the voltmeter and the second positive wire of the solar controller to the external solar panels, which I mounted onto the posterior aspect of my watercraft between the second and third horizontal bar, supported by both of the acrylic boxes. I used a dremel once more to create a hole in the right, longer side of the opaque box to maintain the connection of both batteries once more. After I had finished the wiring for both boxes, I was sure to check them over before flipping the toggle switch to its "On" position and checking that both voltmeters were displaying accurate values to ensure that my wiring had worked.

Now nearing the final steps of the project, I attached a fisher's net to the underside of the watercraft, using zip ties to affix sections of the netting to the front and hind horizontal bars of the metal frame at regular intervals. I also used two lengths of rope to tie the bottom of the net to the front horizontal bar of the watercraft's metal frame, allowing the net to be held up and aiding with the efficiency of its trash-collecting by creating a dome-like structure of the net closer to the drone's posterior for any garbage to sink into. To reinforce this structure, I zip-tied a weight to the netting on either side of the two lengths of rope, another weight in the midst of the net, and a final weight in the back of the net, thereby giving the net some weight and preventing it from collapsing in the middle of a garbage collecting trip. Before I drove to White Rock Lake, I checked over my wiring once again and ensured that my pontoons had not been damaged throughout the project to prevent any unforeseen sinking on the day of the arranged trip.

On Monday, the fifth of June, 2023, my drone was transported from the school campus (it was the last week of school and the trip itself was discussed beforehand) to the White Rock Lake territory. From an area of the dock that was not being used at the time, I was able to release the water-dwelling drone into the lake's water for its final and most crucial test: from 8 A.M. to 2 P.M. that day, I would be using the watercraft to collect all of the garbage that had gathered on the water's surface, testing the drone against the success criteria that I set at the beginning of the project. Though it was quite difficult to maneuver in the water for the first time, and the trip was divided into several sections to allow for times during which the drone's net would be emptied, the journey was successful overall. The drone operated smoothly and without error throughout the day, was not uneven, and did not sink or break after extended periods of time in the lake. Furthermore, although I was required to adjust the net's weight distribution several times to allow for more efficient trash gathering and prevent the garbage from flowing out of the net when the drone moved backwards, the drone was able to gather garbage for hours with the help of its solar panels, which allowed for it to be recharged as it worked. At the end of the trip, I was left with a fully operational drone and newly assured in its ability to clean the lake of garbage as intended, and the lake was left with far less litter on its surface.

Though it ultimately lasted only a few months, the Apprentice Ecologist Initiative project left an indelible mark on me as a scholar while simultaneously serving as an opportunity to utilize previously acquired skills in a real-world setting and with a tangible effect on the community and local wildlife. Not only did participating in this program act as a chance to delve into personal interests and provide aid to an environment and vital landmark without which survival would be significantly more difficult, but it also allowed me to independently practice the vital skills of time management and efficiency when provided with an ambitious goal, a fixed set of time constraints and a product which is meant to adhere to real-world standards. While simultaneously acting to keep the hundreds of diverse species depending on the source of crucial resources provided by White Rock Lake alive and in good health and maintaining the lake's cleanliness for use and enjoyment by the local public, this project allowed me to acquire and make use of a new set of versatile skills that are applicable both inside and outside of the original scope of this project. Using the experience and skill set that I have acquired and developed throughout the duration of my project, I will be able to create further series of drone models to efficiently solve other ecological and/or biological issues while simultaneously acting as a display of the benefits and effectiveness of clean energy and renewable resources. From its beginning phases to the final test on June 6th, this project's effects were proven to be both physical and non-physical, as, at its end, the result was not only my own development and a temporary improvement on the state of White Rock Lake but also an efficient, self-sustaining drone model that effectively combines the elements of the principles of electrical engineering, digital design, and ecology, fueled by renewable energy on a journey of further purification.