B started building an underwater robot about two years ago following directions from Build Your Own Underwater Robot: And Other Wet Projects. The project was one of those slow moving ones; he’d work on it in bits and pieces as he felt like it. The last step required tracking down a car battery that didn’t have enough juice to power a car, but would still power his small engines. A couple of months ago my van’s battery felt compelled to comply. Before Christmas, his robot had its maiden voyage. We found a brackish pond near the beach that was perfect, and he set the robot down into the water.

I was so impressed! The robot itself is attached via long wire to the control box. With several switches he was able to move it in forward and reverse, and also make it drop underwater and rise to the surface. He had to do some slight modifications to the floats on site, but the thing WORKED! A friend took a video which I was hoping to post here, but so far has been unable to send it over to me - you’ll just have to trust me that it’s cool.

The thing that I love about projects like this is that they are completely driven by him (or in other cases, his brother). I had zero interest in building a robot or pushing him to build one - he’s the one who insisted on building one, and my suggestions to start small fell - as they usually do - on deaf ears. This is the child who will build a 3 bedroom house for his first woodworking project. When I finally found the book with instructions (robot making instructions for kids are HARD to come by!), it was too much for me to figure out, but B was determined. He fiddled with parts, asked his dad for help, and put it away when he got frustrated. Sure, it took two years, but what he learned along the way more than makes up for the slow pace of the project. If he’d taken this project on in a traditional school setting he’d have been given a failing grade for not completing it. Instead, we all see it as a slow brewing success.