Twin Tweaks ...
THE AUTONOMOUS ROBOTIC VEHICLE PROJECT’S BEARACUDA (TOP)
AND ETS’S SONIA (BOTTOM) AIMED TO MAKE CANADA PROUD.
70 SERVO 09.2010
SAN DIEGO IBOTICS (TOP) AND UC IRVINE (BOTTOM)
MADE THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOOK GOOD WITH
CARBON FIBER AND ALUMINUM.
AUV Competition rule set is positively spartan by
comparison. Other than some size ( 6’ x 3’ x 3’), weight
(110 lbs max), and safety (torpedoes must not go fast
enough to bruise someone) regulations, there are very few
limitations on creativity. As Davidson so eloquently put it,
more draconian rules would be “otherwise squelching
innovation.”
Living the Life Aquatic
After becoming reacquainted with AUVSI and brushing
up on this year’s game, we were finally ready to meet the
intrepid teams. One of the first teams we talked to were
defending champions Cornell. Cornell had a fantastic run
last year. On their first try, they completed every task, and
with time left over they even got bonus points. In response,
AUVSI has raised the bar by including even more devilishly
difficult vision based tasks. Despite such past success, the
Cornell team refuses to rest on their laurels. The team is
composed entirely of undergrads and is completely student
run. Their primary goal is to train students, and their
comprehensive organization includes business, PR, and
community service elements. On a technical note, this year
they have been working hard to deal with illuminant
metameric failure — the problem that things look different
under different lighting conditions.
Another veteran competitor was the University of Texas
at Dallas. UTD had something to prove this year after seven
years of competition that has seen them as high as second
place two years ago, but drop to fifth last year. UTD’s 2010
AUV sports a modular design that they think might make
them the frontrunners for the Best Kludged AUV Award (if
there was such a thing). Kludged or not, the AUV looks
formidable, and in the words of their team mentor, they’ve
done “pretty well for a landlocked school.”
Robotics Maryland from the University of
Maryland were awarded the Most Promising Rookie
award four years ago when they placed tenth. In their
second year of competition, they placed first and last year,
they placed eighth. To prove that the early vote of
confidence was not made in error, the team this year has
created a purely functional design meant to complete the
tasks as effectively as possible. The Maryland AUV is the
only robotic sub implementing satellite control theory, and
the Maryland team is the only one with multiple team
t-shirts for different days of competition. The murderous
Jason turtle on one design gave the impression that their
AUV (the Tortuga III) would be a positively dangerous
competitor.
Another past winner was the University of Florida,
who won last time we visited in 2005. This year, their AUV
was still named the SubjuGator, but it was an ambitious
new design. Such ambition seems fitting for such a storied
