It takes imagination to look at the segmented white PVC pipes splayed on the table with the long protruding wires and exposed batteries and see a robot. Specifically a robotic eel capable of undulating underwater and through waves.

That is the vision and goal University of New Orleans engineering professor Brandon Taravella has shared with the 11 local middle and high school students who are piloting the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering’s inaugural eel robotics camp.  

On Friday, the students, divided into three teams, will test the creations they have spent the past few days building by racing them in the University’s recreation center pool.

“The contest is just for fun,” Taravella said.

The competition, however, will be a culmination of the weeklong camp funded through a National Center for Advanced Manufacturing grant that introduced a variety of engineering concepts. Over the course of the week, the students used 3-D modeling, additive manufacturing such as 3-D printing, mechanical and hydrodynamics design, and electrical engineering.

“We’re just trying to incorporate them all together and use the robotics as a platform to tap into that,” Taravella said. “So, the idea is by the end of the week we will build a robotic eel, three robotic eels, and then we’ll race them.”

Taravella is the recipient of several grants for his research into hydrodynamic propulsion that led to the creation of the robotic eel for use as an underwater drone, to search for mines and in data collection.

The robotic eel’s ability to produce little to no wake in the water allows it to use less energy.

"Anytime you produce wake, it’s lost energy,” Taravella said. “So we’re trying to conserve as much energy as possible and use all that energy to move around.”

The campers learned about the robotic eel, were given lessons on how to program its swimming motion and then allowed the freedom to create their own models.

As camper Vivian Vazquez and her teammates worked on their eel, they expressed appreciation for the concepts they’d learned.

“This is the future of science and math,” said Vazquez, a freshman at Mt. Carmel High School where she is also a member of the robotics team. “You have to know the coding and building. This definitely gives us a step up!”

Lorraine Steigner, a sophomore at Mt. Carmel, who said she is leaning toward a career in research, said the camp has helped to expand her thinking, develop additional skills and to be more versatile.

“It’s a good learning experience, even if I don’t go into engineering,” she said. “It’s very useful just to understand how things work.”