Abstract:

The College of the North Atlantic-Qatar (CNA-Q) is a satellite campus of a Canadian comprehensive technical college based in Newfoundland. CNA-Q is beginning its eighth year this September with over 2500 students and 400 faculty. The college combines Canadian curriculum with industry expertise.
In 2008, we began the first phase of a research programme that had two main objectives--interdisciplinary learning through student driven projects. With these two objectives as our central theme, we received a grant to design a prototype of an autonomous environmental research robot (ERR). The idea behind the ERR was to have students search out environmental issues and then work as a team to see how robots could be used to help. Their first 'mission' involves the endangered Hawksbill Turtle indigenous to the gulf region. In Qatar, the female hawksbill turtle lays her eggs on the beaches of one of the largest industrial cities in the world, Ras Laffan, producer of natural gas. The hawksbill turtle is at risk for many reasons including turtle meat and turtle eggs are considered a delicacy, natural predictors and our concern, the nesting beaches have been contaminated.
Using Mindstorm robotic kits, students from Engineering, IT, Business and Health Sciences built over 100 robots looking for the best-designed and programmed robot, capable of withstanding the harsh environment as well as being sophisticated enough to collect and store data at given intervals. To ensure that the students had the background necessary to understand the turtle's plight, they spent a week in Malaysia working with Dr Nicholas Pilcher, founder of the Marine research foundation, Sabah including a stay at Borneo`s Turtle Island. In addition, this spring the students were present at Fuwayrit beach, Qatar when three turtles layed their eggs. CNA-Q adopted one of the turtles,"Q", outfitting her with a satellite tracking device supplying the students with additional statistics and knowledge which will be incorporated into their final research paper.
Phase II, beginning in the fall of 2010,will be building the actual robot equipped with sensors and solar panels and employing it onto the beach to begin its data collecting. This paper will address from a teaching and learning prospective, the "lab with walls" the robots and the "lab without walls" the environment as it applies to the ERR`s and the Hawksbill turtle.

Keywords:

Technology, Research, Robotics, Environment.