Day Two

This was the team from Amador Valley High School, the only high-school team to enter the competition. They had a great huge sub, that weighed in at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 220 lbs. They used a 4-thruster design as well, with two vertical thrusters and two thrusters for forward movement and turning.

The used a Pentium computer as the main CPU, and speed controllers from radio controlled cars. They had a USB webcam for a vision system. Very complex, with lots of wires running all over the place, lots of through-hulls, etc.

Here's the AUV from Cornell University. They used an aluminum open-frame design, with the battery pack in the tube at the bottom, and the computers and sensors in the top tube. The top tube was also larger, which increases the buoyancy at the top of the sub, where it is needed. This makes the sub self-righting, and very stable.

Cornell used five thruster -- two forward/turning, two vertical, and one horizontal. Here you can see a couple of the navy divers getting ready to put it into the water.

This is the University of Colorado at Denver's entry again. Once they got it in the water, they realized a couple things: it was very positively buoyant, and much too top-heavy. So, they went out to a sports store and bought a barbell set, and slung the barbell under the AUV, hanging off the aluminum frame. They put about 40 pounds of weights on the barbells, and this helped smooth out the stability problems.

Here's a picture of the main dock area, where all the subs were launched from, and where the judges watched, and controlled the beacons.

This is the Florida University entry. As mentioned before, they used six trolling motors for thrusters. They had an interesting system for testing their sub: most teams used a wire tether for testing, which let them control the sub directly, and let them get feedback from the sensors and systems on the sub. The Florida U. team had a wireless link, so they didn't need a wire tether in the water. Of course, on day three, when the actual competition was on, they (like all the other teams) had to remove the tether.

Here's the Florida U. AUV, sitting a couple feet under the water. You can see the can floating on the aurface, just above the sub -- that's the antenna from the wireless tether.

There were also a couple of navy divers in the water, one on the right that you can see, and one on the left making all the bubbles.

This is the insides of the MIT Orca-2 AUV. They were having some sensor calibration problems. They used a Linux embedded PC as the brain of their AUV, and they also had the inertial navigation system (on loan), and a sophisticated sonar system.

Here's the AUV from the Naval Academy. They used a flooded fiberglass cowl, with an inner aluminum pressure hull. They had an interesting thruster system, with a pair of small thrusters in the back for forward/turning motion, and water jets to control pitch of the sub.

Here's the Stevens Institute AUV. They had an interesting three-hull design of welded aluminum.

Here's a better view of the Stevens AUV, on the dock, ready for a test run. They had four trolling-motor thrusters, with the standard configuration. You can see a pressure hose from an air-compressor tank that they used to pressurize the hull -- this allows them to find leaks much easier when the sub is at the surface, and it helps prevent leaks when the sub is submerged.

Here's a close-up of the University of Rhode Island AUV. You can clearly see the clear pressure hull, the two Lego computers, the propellor on the back, the rudder (top and bottom), the stabilizer fins, and the dive fins on the piece that is sitting on the table. At the bottom of that piece is the light sensor tube, which is a long tube with a light sensor at the back.

Here's the URI AUV again, with the pressure hull slid part-way off. The clear tube was really neat to have, and it not only allowed everyone to see inside the AUV, but also allowed the team to control the AUV while on the bench and on the surface with a TV-like remote control.

Here's one of the URI guys, carrying their sub towards the lauch site. Their sub was incredibly simple, and it also only weighed in at 25 pounds, so it was the only entry that could be launched by hand.

Here's the URI sub, in the water, with a couple of navy divers on the dock, and the URI team member starting the sub using the IR remote control.

Here's the University of Western Florida's AUV, sitting on the table, open, with the team members trying to figure out why their depth sensor doesn't work.

And here's the UWF sub in the water, heading out for more testing. This was the end of day two...