Saskatoon teen recognized for her search and rescue robot

A Saskatoon high school student has been honoured with a national award for creating a diving robot that uses artificial intelligence to aid in search and rescue missions underwater.

Yurui Qin said the idea for her award-winning robot started with a school project.

“This robot came from a current event assignment that I actually had in a history class a while back in September,” Qin told CTV News.

The 16-year-old came across a number of articles about flooding. That’s when she decided to help those impacted by the most common natural disaster in the world.

“I was looking at search and rescue methods that we have nowadays. A lot of them just basically use human labour, which is a massive problem because waters can become contaminated and search and rescuers themselves can be endangered, as well as the victims,” she said.

She said the ‘AI-QUA Savior’ moves on its own using various light sensors to judge distance.

“There is a camera on the robot that has AI algorithms inside of it, so if the camera detects a human, it sends a text message to search and rescue teams,” she said.

Yurui Qin said the ‘AI-QUA Savior’ moves on its own using various light sensors to judge distance. (Courtesy: Yurui Qin)

After months of working on a prototype, Qin entered it in the ‘Ingenious+ Youth Innovation Challenge’, where she won the $10,000 National Climate Change and Environment award.

“My first reaction was like, ‘there's no way’ because I spent countless hours, even sleepless nights, just working on this robot. There were times when I almost gave up. I had code that wasn't programming right... but in the end, I continued, I really progressed, I persevered,” she said.

• Get the CTV News app for Saskatchewan breaking news alerts and top stories 

The challenge is hosted by the Rideau Hall Foundation (RHF), an Ottawa-based non-profit.

“We really were so impressed by Yurui and just the amount of compassion and community-mindedness, for someone so young to be so passionate about climate change and the environment is extremely heartwarming,” said Jill Clark, a spokesperson with RHF.

Qin said she is going to put the award money back into her robot to further advance it.

“In the future, I can definitely be seeing myself doing something in engineering, computer science, just continue to work on this to be able to help a larger community than myself,” Qin said.