A team from the MCAST Institute of ICT has just returned from Vilnius, Lithuania, after participating in Sailtunities, an international hackathon focused on environmental robotics. The event brought together students from across Europe to design and build robotic boats equipped with environmental sensors. The aim was to collect and analyse water quality data from real lake environments.

 

 

Our team, made up of five students from the Institute of ICT: Andrene Azzopardi, Gabriel Sultana Marmara, Julia Muscat, Krish Ahuja and Emiliano De Santis, were mentored by Director Conrad Vassallo and Deputy Director Thomas Gatt. The competition challenged teams to think creatively and apply technical knowledge to real-world environmental issues. Our boat, named Dgħajsa.MT, was built using plastic pipes, making it sustainable, lightweight and agile. All components were mounted within a compact, waterproof lunch box.

 

 

The robotic boat was tested at the Green Lakes in Lithuania, where it successfully collected a total of 677 sensor records. These included readings from a wide range of sensors such as pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, air and water temperature, pressure, humidity, lux, GPS, air quality, gyroscope and accelerometer. All data was stored locally on an SD card in CSV format. The boat was equipped with two onboard computers – a flight controller and an Arduino MKR1000 – with all sensor data routed to the Arduino for logging.

 

 

The students also produced a detailed data analysis report. This included a GIS heatmap of water quality readings, the full GPS path taken by the boat, an animation visualising its orientation using gyroscope data, and a set of graphs and insights from the data collected. Additional analysis was also carried out in a chemistry lab, further enriching the quality of the final results.

We are extremely proud to share that the team received three awards at the event:

• 🏆 1st Prize – Master of Water Award

• 🏅 Top Data Architects Award

• 🌍 Best Water Explorers Award

 

 

We would like to sincerely thank Robotikos Mokykla, for their fantastic organisation and support throughout. Special thanks also go to the staff at Vilnius Joachim Lelevel Engineering Gymnasium for their hospitality and collaboration and to MCAST and Erasmus+ for supporting and funding this opportunity.

This project reflects the strong spirit of innovation, sustainability and applied technology at the MCAST Institute of ICT.