Introduction

Rivers have been the backbone of civilization since, well a very long time ago. Humans use rivers for many purposes. Sadly, a lot of rivers have been polluted with trash. People intentionally and irresponsibly throw trash into the water. As a result, it pollutes the water and harms the life of its inhabitants, such as fish, crustaceans, and more. This devastating situation made me think about the contribution that I could give as a student. I come to the conclusion to make an effective device that can help people to clean the trash from rivers.

 Goal Identification

The goal of this project is to help with water pollution for a better and cleaner environment. We can achieve this goal by making a device to remove rubbish from our rivers. It has a container, shovels, an escalator-like machine, rafts, air distiller, wheels, and a huge cage to protect the motherboard.

Global Context

Because I have chosen an environmental problem as my project, I decided to choose “Scientific and Technical Innovation” as my global context to guide me through my project. This global context will enable me to explore my idea in more detail and focus on my goal. More specifically, I chose it so I can focus on one of the subheadings of the global context, which is “an inquiry into the natural world and its laws”. From this subheading, I am able to explore more into “systems, models, method; products, processes and solutions” which is suitable for my project, which is to make a device that can help to clean trash from the rivers.

Product Specification

My product is designed to collect the rubbish in rivers. There is a conveyor-belt like machine where the trash will be taken out of the river. A tray is attached in front of the conveyor-belt machine that is used to help pick up the trash. During the trial, we imitated trash by using squashed newspapers. It turns out that type of rubbish did not work well with the conveyor belt, instead it bounced off. So I added a tray to help the trash go up the conveyer belt – and it worked. I’m assuming that once it gets into the water, it will float with the help of plastic bottles.

Current

Currently, I am still fixing and working on the robot so that it won’t sound so ‘annoying’. When the robot is activated and the conveyor-belt is activated, it produces an unpleasant sound. Therefore, I am working on a solution. In the future, I would like to modify my device by making a sensor to sort out the rubbish from organic, plastic etc.

By using this device, rivers in Indonesia can be clean from any trash that is harmful to the river ecosystem.

Vincent Hadwin Tanujaya – 11 DP