Meet the students who built DiveGuard, a low-cost underwater messaging system

Image: Conrad Space Center For divers beneath the surface, communication can become surprisingly difficult. Radio signals that work reliably on land do not travel effectively through water, leaving divers dependent on hand signals, pre-arranged plans or specialised equipment when they need to communicate. Five Chinese students, Hao Ting Lyu, Qing Ying Cao, Bai Xuan Ye, Yuanhao Zhang and Jia An Pan, have designed a potential solution to that problem. Their project, called DiveGuard, is a cost-effective underwater short-message communication system designed to let divers and surface teams exchange text-level messages underwater. The team developed the system as part of the Conrad Challenge, where DiveGuard was selected as a finalist and later recognised with a Power Pitch Award at the 2026 Innovation Summit. The official Conrad Challenge profile lists Zhi Heng Dong as the team's coach. Rather than attempting to bring conventional wireless communication underwater, the students built their concept around low-cost acoustic communication, turning sound into a means of transmitting short messages beneath the surface.Why is underwater communication so difficult?The problem DiveGuard tackl...