While on a camping trip, a 15-year-old boy named Evan Budz from Burlington, Ontario, spotted a snapping turtle swimming nearby. The sight of it inspired him to build a robotic turtle that picks up on environmental threats with a 96% accuracy rate.
Additionally, the robotic turtle can map underwater habitats, identify sudden changes in ecosystems, and track the spread of pollution. The invention was just another way for him to help out the planet.
“When I saw the snapping turtle, it was so graceful, fluidic, and generally non-disruptive,” said Evan. “I thought it’d be really interesting to go and try and replicate its natural swimming kinematics.”
“Most current underwater technologies can produce things like noise from their propellers or very high-pressure water streams, which can erode environments.”
Evan’s device is an autonomous vehicle that uses AI to monitor underwater ecosystems. It features high-quality cameras and machine-learning models to detect invasive species, coral bleaching, and plastic waste.
It also mimics the fluid motions of a wild green sea turtle in the water, gently passing through coral reefs and delicate aquatic areas without bothering the local marine creatures.
To create the bionic turtle, Evan started by studying sea turtles. He watched videos of the reptiles swimming and talked with experts at his local aquarium. He learned that sea turtles use their front flippers to move forward and their back legs for steering.
Next, he designed a prototype in a 3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and engineering software. His robot has four flippers. Just like a real turtle, it uses its larger front flippers to propel itself forward and its smaller back flippers for changing direction.
The body of the bionic turtle is an acrylic tube that contains the electronic components, including a microcomputer, which runs AI models to record data and detect environmental threats.
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Various sensors, such as a GPS module, allow the robot to navigate the water. Finally, there is a front camera that shows its surroundings.
Evan has been calling his turtle BURT, the Bionic Underwater Robotic Turtle. BURT weighs about 11 pounds and can swim for up to eight hours per charge on a lithium battery. It also has a solar panel to keep it going.
Currently, BURT swims at approximately 0.5 miles per hour, which is the typical speed of turtles. Evan can tweak the rate of its flipper strokes if he wants it to swim faster. He conducted most of his testing in his grandparents’ backyard pool.
“I basically went out and created a simulated coral reef setup using 3D models,” he said. “And the turtle then swims around them to simulate what it would do in a real-world environment.”
According to his tests, BURT can detect replicated coral bleaching with an accuracy of 96%. Evan plans to bring BURT to different environments.
The robot has won some major science awards. In 2025, it won first prize at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists in Latvia and the annual Canada-Wide Science Fair.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
