{"id":569149,"date":"2026-07-31T19:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/569149\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T19:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T19:22:11","slug":"can-an-ai-robot-turtle-help-solve-the-microplastics-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/569149\/","title":{"rendered":"Can an AI robot turtle help solve the microplastics problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                    Canadian student Evan Budz has built an autonomous robotic turtle that swims through bodies of water looking for microplastics. The\u202f<a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/microplastics-innovation-ai-robot-turtle-evan-budz-2026-7\" target=\"_blank\" data-cms-ai=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">project<\/a>\u202finvolved\u202froughly\u202f4,000\u202fhours\u202fof work, a custom 3D holographic camera and an AI system trained to tell tiny plastic fragments from other particles.\u202f<\/p>\n<p>The turtle follows predetermined search routes, regulates its own\u202fdepth\u202fand analyzes water directly \u2014 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.\u202f<\/p>\n<p>The invention earned him a $50,000 scholarship. It also began, charmingly enough, with repeated failures in his grandparents\u2019 swimming pool, where early versions sank \u201clike a brick.\u201d\u202fApparently, even futuristic robot turtles have to learn how to swim.\u202f<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s note: This story was drafted by AI and edited by humans.\u202f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian student Evan Budz has built an autonomous robotic turtle that swims through bodies of water looking for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-569149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}