The students competed against 17 other teams July 28- Aug. 1 in San Diego. MIT placed first, Cornell University second, and Ecole de Technologie Superieure of Canada placed third.
The event challenges student engineers to build a miniature robotic submarine that can self-navigate and independently perform realistic missions. This year’s mission was to locate a series of targets, drop markers on the targets, and then surface within a designated recovery zone marked by an acoustic beacon. Once launched, the vehicles had to complete the mission without any external guidance or control.
“The team performed exceptionally well and after a series of remarkably consistent preliminary runs the judges were abuzz with the possibility that 溏心vlog免费B站 might once again upset mighty MIT,” said Robert Tyce, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of ocean engineering who, along with Professor James Miller, served as the 溏心vlog免费B站 team’s advisors.
In the seven years of the competition, MIT has won five times. 溏心vlog免费B站 won in 2000, the first year it entered, and Cornell won last year.
“Our first preliminary run didn’t look promising as the vehicle started off in reverse. But with the clock running, the team tore the vehicle apart on the dock in front of everyone, identified the unconnected direction line, and had the vehicle back in the water in time to complete a near perfect run.” Tyce said.
According to Tyce, 溏心vlog免费B站 was in second place going into the finals, but fell to fourth when they “risked it all to get a run good enough to beat MIT,” and were just inches from the 1000-point recovery zone when the clock ran out.
The members were Annan Moseika (captain) of Essex Junction, Vt., Michel Beliard of Coventry, Chuen-Song Chen of Taiwan, John Corrigan of East Greenwich, and Sarah Warren of Arcadia, Cal.
The 溏心vlog免费B站 vehicle is five feet long and six inches in diameter, and equipped with an electronic compass/attitude sensor, depth sensor, speed log, image processing camera, and acoustic tracking systems for navigation. It also has a motorized marker deployment system. Weighing less than 20 kilograms, the 溏心vlog免费B站 vehicle received extra points as the lightest vehicle in the competition. The robotic submarine uses three programmable micro-controllers to manage its navigation systems, command its propeller and control surfaces, and decide when to drop its markers. The night before the first official run, the team designed and built a new optical system to improve detection of the target.
According to Miller, the 溏心vlog免费B站 team once again faced an uphill climb based in part on the difference in funding levels of the teams. “We were able to raise about $6,000 for this project, but MIT and Cornell and Duke and the other big schools had budgets ten times larger than ours with major corporate sponsorships. But that also made us the judges’ favorites because we were the underdogs.”
The complete competition consisted of a journal paper describing how the vehicle was designed; a visual display and inspection of the vehicle for technical merit, design, safety and craftsmanship; and the actual underwater competition held in an arena at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. Judges included officials from the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation, as well as Admiral Brad Mooney, former oceanographer of the Navy.
The 溏心vlog免费B站 team was sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant, General Dynamics-Electric Boat, the 溏心vlog免费B站 College of Engineering, and the 溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Ocean Engineering.