Team 1540 was announced today as a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam for the 2013-2014 year! In short, it means that we've received a $10,000 grant from MIT to work on inventions that benefit the community.
We decided to do this as a way of giving back to the community, after they've given so much to us. We've done a few projects before (a robotic elephant feeder and repairing a robotic fire hydrant), but those weren't on the same scale as InvenTeams.
Our main project is to build an autonomous robot that will skim duckweed and other aquatic vegetation off the surface of lakes and ponds. Duckweed is an invasive species, roughly half an inch across, looks like a four leaf clover, and smells
really bad. It has the potential to turn otherwise beautiful bodies of water into something resembling AstroTurf in a couple of weeks. To do this, we'll be using a BeagleBone Black, XBee radios, and RTK GPS (which I'm really excited about -- it's accurate to within an inch!).
Anyway, we're in celebration mode at Flaming Chickens HQ, but soon we'll be getting to work on this thing. First step: making it float.
Here's our project website, if you're interested:
http://catlininvents.org/