Over the past two years, at the University of Sheffield, I have been studying general engineering. It has been very rewarding and enjoyable. I have learnt a lot from it however it has been a very challenging course for me. I have stayed very driven in the course and so far my grades have been reflecting this. I have also been playing for the 1XV rugby team as loosehead prop and I have met many lifelong friends and I am having an amazing time. 

The Squid Project gave us 8 weeks to design and build a biomimetic autonomous robot that could swim in water. The aim of the project was to build a prototype that could swim and detect leaks and find rubbish in pipes. This was part B of an overall assignment and we were given a scenario in which a waste management plant (which we had designed in Part A) had been flooded and waste had leaked everywhere. The robots job was to find and detect blockages and waste in pipes and waterways. Therefore the robot could not have a propellor as it could get jammed in bits of the waste. The testing day reflected this as in the water flume, bits of obstacles had been thrown in.

The parts took four weeks to arrive and we were given a £200 budget to build it. We ran some tests on the motor after creating a prototype for it and realised the motor wasn’t strong enough so we had to buy a new one which was 4x stronger. This part took another 4 weeks to arrive and therefore couldn’t be put in place for testing day, in which it didn’t move.

However, this was very positive for the project as we could see how to improve the insides of the Squid to enable it to move more efficiently. We had to combine mechanical systems, electrical systems, coding an Arduino and many different manufacturing types to make this robot, all whilst taking account for budget, sustainability etc. Overall the Squid was very rewarding to make and I learnt a lot from this project.

Henry Welpton, OH 2013-23

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