Our group chose the Trash Cleanup because it fits everyone in our group. We are an architect, a teacher, an environment engineer and a programmer. We´ve been inspired by all disasters happening on Brazil´s coast because of debris in the ocean, such as oil and plastic. So, we decided to offer a solution for all the micro plastics already in the ocean.
Since our chosen challenge was to clean the trash out of the oceans, we built a project based in two steps. The first one is to build a drone that will work under the water picking up the micro plastics through a filter, which will be design by recycled PET, and the micro plastics will be set in a recycled PET net. The micro plastics will be hold by an oil called magnetite that will work out as a magnet, because of its similar property to micro plastics. Then, the drone will work out by itself through a GPS and it will be guide by the ocean current, using the databases from NASA, using help from support vessels as well. So, we also decided to create an app to assign these collect plastics to big industries that are looking for feedstock to produce new products such as shoes, bags, pairs of glasses, and gas. Then, an extra function will be a section responsible for new projects about cleaning up the oceans, which will be available for future sponsors or investors.
We had some problems with precise databases, but with a lot of research, we could find it. Also, how we would keep the micro plastics inside de net, what kind of material we need to build the filter, once we knew metal was going to oxidizes, and biodegradable material would deteriorate with time. So, for the filter, we chose recycled PET plastic, because of its service life and for being in contact with the water all day long, and for the net we chose the oil magnetite to stick the micro plastics. We also had the idea to direct the micro plastics somewhere that they could be useful. So we thought about industries that need/can use the micro plastics as a feedstock for the production of new products, such as shoes, bags.
About NASA databases, we used the ocean current to guide the drone integrated with the GPS and the support vessels.
This project can be improved with some help from volunteers and companies to collect the micro plastics, and sponsors to invest in the app, the drone and another projects. In addition, we still can add sections for the drones’ localization in real time through the app, and provide places which are the most polluted and also turn them available for all of those who wants to help the collecting process. After the space apps some of us may continue working in this project. It was a very interesting challenge, and can be the start to new projects to help cleaning the oceans.

We used AutoCad to create the drone's prototype, cell phones as Android and IOS for researches and Windows and Figma to create an app's prototype.

The link down below will lead you to our first app's prototype.

https://www.figma.com/proto/Ebee7B6bDrMQKCC3gYUpI0/Projeto?node-id=3%3A0&scaling=scale-down