Imagine opening a box of rocks, dirt, and sediment and realizing that somewhere inside, there might be a fossil just waiting to be discovered. Pretty exciting, right? The challenge is that someone has to carefully sort through all of it first, and that takes a lot of time, space, patience, and expert help.
For our Innovation Project, our team focused on this problem: there are many valuable fossils waiting to be sorted, but there are not always enough experts or enough space to sort them quickly. Fossil sorting can also be slow and tiring because it takes careful attention to detail. Over time, this can cause boxes of unsorted materials to pile up.
That is where Paleobotics comes in!
We created Paleobotics because we realized fossil sorting needed more than one simple fix. It needed a team of ideas working together: a robotic arm, an online volunteer system, and a smart tool that could learn and improve over time.
Paleobotics has three main parts: Tele-Paleo, our volunteer platform, and AutoSort.
First up is Tele-Paleo. With Tele-Paleo, volunteers do not have to be in the lab to help sort fossils. They can help from almost anywhere by controlling a robotic arm with a joystick, keyboard, or VR headset. A camera with a microscopic lens lets them see the fossils up close, and an AI tool called Segment Anything helps point out what might be a fossil and what might just be debris. This makes fossil sorting easier, more flexible, and open to more people.
Next is our volunteer platform. Volunteers start by signing up on our website. Then they watch short training videos to learn how to use Tele-Paleo and how to spot fossils. After that, they complete three quick practice tasks to show that they are ready.
Once volunteers are trained, they receive sorting jobs based on their skill level. Beginners can start helping right away, but a more experienced volunteer checks their work. Intermediate volunteers are checked by experts. This way, lots of people can join in while still keeping the sorting accurate.
We also use a smart task system to match volunteers with the right jobs. This helps the work move faster and makes sure important fossils do not get stuck waiting in a box forever.
Finally, we have AutoSort. AutoSort is the part of Paleobotics that gets smarter the more it is used. Every time someone uses Tele-Paleo, the system learns a little more. It collects information about where fossils are, how volunteers move them, and which pieces are probably just debris.
Then AutoSort can use that information to help identify and sort easier fossil trays on its own. It is not meant to replace people. Instead, it handles simpler jobs so volunteers and experts can spend more time on fossils that are fragile, tricky, or especially important.
The best part? The more people use Tele-Paleo, the smarter AutoSort becomes. Over time, it can learn patterns and get better at helping with fossil sorting.
Our solution matters because it could make fossil sorting faster, easier, and more open to people everywhere. Even though Paleobotics started as an FLL project, we believe it could make a real-world difference. It brings more people into the discovery process, saves experts time, and helps make sure valuable fossils do not stay hidden in boxes for years.
