Canadian student Evan Budz has built an autonomous robotic turtle that swims through bodies of water looking for microplastics. The project involved roughly 4,000 hours of work, a custom 3D holographic camera and an AI system trained to tell tiny plastic fragments from other particles.
The turtle follows predetermined search routes, regulates its own depth and analyzes water directly — potentially avoiding the slow, expensive process of sending samples to a laboratory. By the time Budz entered the project in the 2026 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, it could distinguish microplastics from other microparticles with 94 percent accuracy.
The invention earned him a $50,000 scholarship. It also began, charmingly enough, with repeated failures in his grandparents’ swimming pool, where early versions sank “like a brick.” Apparently, even futuristic robot turtles have to learn how to swim.
Editor’s note: This story was drafted by AI and edited by humans.