The Wayfinders project builds upon a marine robotic kit used in our summer 2018 outreach program with the National Geographic Student Expeditions at MIT, MIT Sea Grant, and the New England Aquarium. The 2020 system under development removes the monolithic pressurized control box of version 1.0 and expands its functions across many smaller interconnectable modules, allowing for greater flexibility in marine vehicle design and execution possibilities. Both systems aimed to be low-cost, extensible, expandable, modular, portable, playful, and easy to configure and deploy.

Our aim is to build an awareness of the state of the aquatic environment and instill a greater responsibility in shaping our interactions with that environment. To do so, young people will view and sample the underwater wonders of the world with their flexibly configurable vehicles and get outside to explore their local waterway. Our approach embraces Seymour Papert’s model of "low floors," where getting started is easy, and "high ceilings," where students can pour their time and collaborative work efforts into creative engineering solutions to carry out a marine science experiment of their own design in the field.

2018 Team: Katy Croff Bell, Jenni Chow, Harm van Beek, Marcel Schouwenaar, John Paris, Rachel Hwang, Tom Consi, Daniel Mathiasen, Avery Normandin, Philipp Schmidt, Katherine McConachie, Sarah Hoffmann

2020 Team: Katy Croff Bell, Dan Novy, Jenni Chow, Igloo Innovations

Funded by: Open Ocean, 11^th Hour Racing

2021 status: Continuing, under the auspices of the Ocean Discovery League