Integrated Product Design was a course to use design and engineering to solve a meaningful problem. I worked on an interdisciplinary team of business students, industrial designers, and engineers to develop a viable product. This is our story:

The Charles River that runs right through Boston is disgusting. There are many causes like agricultural runoff and illegal dumping, but there is a far more pernicious effect at play: Boston’s aging infrastructure is beginning to leak. As is happening along throughout New England, old sewage and storm water systems are reaching the ends of their expected lifespans and quietly disintegrating below the blissfully unaware inhabitants. When sewage gets into storm water runoff systems, it gets into rivers, lakes, and the ocean and poses a serious health risk.

The first step to solving this problem is finding and repairing the parts of this system that need it most, but locating regions of sewage infiltration is cost prohibitive. That is until now. Enter Nautilus.

Nautilus is a sensor that is designed to be released into storm water systems and measure temperature. Sewage infiltration leaves a distinctive thermal signature on the otherwise much cooler storm water runoff, and this spike in temperature can be measured by Nautilus. Designed to be deployed en masse, this mobile network of “release and catch” sensors can map out an entire city’s storm water system at a fraction of the cost of alternative methods of infiltration detection.

In addition to the above looks-like, we also created a fully functional works-like prototype:

Our full process book, including the story of how our team came up with this idea, can be read here