This 16-year-old built an autonomous AI-powered robot turtle that finds microplastics in water
Sixteen-year-old Evan Budz won a $50,000 scholarship for developing an autonomous, turtle-inspired robot that uses AI and holographic cameras to detect microplastics. His project involved extensive field trials and custom hardware engineering.
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Evan Budz said winning a $50,000 scholarship for his research in May was "surreal." Chris Ayers/Chris Ayers Photography/License by Society for Science Evan Budz built a turtle-inspired autonomous robot that detects microplastics in water. His project won a $50,000 scholarship at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. Budz, 16, conducted 15 field trials across 10 bodies of water in Canada. In the summer of 2024, Evan Budz stood at the edge of his grandparents' pool in Canada, trying to solve a unique problem: How to make his autonomous sea turtle robot swim. "I remember some of my first tests. I would put my robot in the water, and it would sink right to the bottom," Budz, 16, told Business Insider. "It wouldn't swim. It wouldn't regulate its depth. It was like a brick."
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