- Overview
- 2009 Competition Feeds
Competition
Every year, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) holds an International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition at the TRANSDEC Facility in San Diego, California. This competition is aimed at "advancing the state-of-the-art of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) by challenging a new generation of engineers to perform realistic missions in the underwater environment and to foster ties between young engineers and the organizations developing AUV technologies."This is the 12th year of the competition and USCR hopes to improve upon its 6th place achievement in 2007 and 15th place finish last year.
The basic format of the competition is an underwater course that each AUV must navigate in order to complete its mission. Along the course are a series of tasks, which require the robot to interact with its environment. This year’s tasks include: passing through the validation gate with a fixed heading, firing the flare by hitting a buoy, following the orange paths, passing under the barbed wire PVCs, dropping bombs in target bins, firing torpedoes into a machine gun nest, homing in on an acoustic emitter, recovering the briefcase and surfacing inside the correct octagon rooftop.
For more details on this competition, please visit the competition page on the AUVSI website.
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Road Trip! -- July 27, 2009
We just arrived in San Diego and checked into the Quality Inn a couple hours ago. Here are a few pictures of our room and work station:
Team Check-in & Orientation -- July 28, 2009
Today marked the start of the competition, with team check-in and an orientation meeting at the Kona Kai Resort. We also held a small wet test at our hotel's pool. This is what happened:
Bad:
- we think the compass is being thrown off by the magnetic fields of the thrusters/kill switch; we're considering building a small "periscope" to keep the compass above the field
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the cameras are working, but we're struggling to work two at the same time
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at one point, we pressurized the sub and it was slowly losing pressure
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one of the o-rings was destroyed while removing the batteries from the sub; however, we have a couple extras
- batteries are working well; after 2 hours of testing, the voltage reading on the batteries were 22V/24V
- "the hotel room is BOMB" - Pierre
We have a practice time slot tomorrow at 7:15am, so we'll be busy working all day. Here are some pictures of today's events:
In-Water Practice Time -- July 29, 2009
We spent over 12 hours at the TRANSDEC facility today testing and debugging the SeaBee. We were able to get some footage of the course. Much more to come!
We Qualified! -- July 30, 2009
Here is a video of the SeaBee going through the gate and qualifying for the next round of competition:
The Mayor of San Diego also stopped by to visit:
We are currently busy preparing for the next round of judging. Stay tuned!
Static Judging --July 31, 2009
Today was static judging. Flo, Daniel, and Mike each presented the mechanical, electrical, and computer science aspects of the SeaBee III.
We are currently working on new forms of flo-tation to better stabilize the SeaBee's buoyancy.
Here is a daily recap of today's events put together by AUVSI:
Qualifying Rounds-- August 1, 2009
We won 8th in Static Judging yesterday! So we were able to choose a 3:00pm qualifying run. We were able to go through the gate and hit the buoy, thanks to the grabber. Here is the video:
Don (our machinist) also stopped by to check out the SeaBee and pose for pictures with the team:
Here is a daily recap of today's events put together by AUVSI:
The Finals! -- August 2, 2009
Yesterday's run put us in the top ten, and into the finals!
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We placed sixth in the AUVSI and ONR's 12th International AUV Competition! There were 33 teams overall, 10 of which competed in the final round. The SeaBee looked great and performed amazingly---all thanks to a week of late nights, outstanding teamwork, and this. In our final run, the SeaBee went through the gate, followed the pipeline, and hit the buoy with ease.
The top three teams were:
1st - Cornell University ($10,000)
2nd - University of Victoria ($4,000)
3rd - University of Rhode Island ($3,000)
We are all ecstatic and motivated to make the improvements to SeaBee. Expect to see a closer competition for first place next year!
Noah's Interview:
