Submersible robot takes home top prize
by Anna Czolpinski
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Provided photo This robot, invented by a team at UVic, is both autonomous and remote controlled. |
The University of Victoria’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Design Team (AUVic) made waves at the 2007 Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC).
The team brought home two national engineering awards from the competition held in Saskatoon, including the competition’s top prize for Innovative Design and a special award for Technical Excellence.
The award-winning vehicle is a submersible robot capable of completing intelligent tasks without aid from human operators. It is capable of its own navigation, data collection and decision making. In addition, the robot sports an arm for underwater manipulation capable of modification for the task at hand.
“What makes our design innovative is the combination of compact size and smart design,” said AUVic team leader Matt Burdyny, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student at UVic who has been leading the team since September 2005.
“[Currently available] are underwater vehicles the size of small pickup trucks, which can cost up to $30,000 per day to operate.... Costs go down significantly when the size of the vehicle goes down,” he said.
“They won the prize because they successfully designed a vehicle that is at once very compact and very innovative. This is not something that they picked up from elsewhere.... They have used industrial-quality parts in a very innovative way” said Michael Miller, the dean of engineering at UVic. “It is the first vehicle of its size that is capable of being both autonomous and remotely controlled.”
In terms of its data collection capabilities, the vehicle is able to register three-dimensional underwater images with the use of sonar and a combination of three digital video cameras.
The AUVic-designed robot is able to process the collected data, enabling it to make decisions on its own and reducing the need to redeploy the vehicle.
The vehicle is also capable of autonomous navigation. “[Users] can drop the vehicle off in New York and, provided enough battery power is supplied, it can make its own way to the South of France,” said Burdyny.
An example of a possible application of the vehicle is for oil companies who operate offshore oil rigs, suggested Burdyny. The vehicle could be deployed to identify a faulty pipe, follow along it with the use of sonar and visual imaging, identify a problematic area such as a crack or corrosion and mark the area using its robotic arm.
The vehicle could also be used to replace divers who work in deep waters and must live in underwater housing for weeks while gradually being lowered, a task that is dangerous, time consuming and expensive. The vehicle is able to descend to depths of 300 metres quickly, and changing the material that makes up the robot’s hull from acrylic to aluminum or titanium can also increase this depth.
Another potential application could be port security, in which the vehicle would allow port authorities to examine the undersides of ships coming in and out of a harbour.
The team’s main obstacle has been financing. “So far the project has cost almost $700,000,” said Burdyny. Most of this money, which has been obtained mostly from industry sponsors and UVic’s faculty of engineering, has gone to instruments and equipment. Some of the expenses include a $30,000 underwater navigation system, $30,000 for the hulls, $65,000 worth of cables and connectors and $60,000 for the imaging and sonar systems and $25,000 worth of computer components.
When asked about faculty involvement in the project, Miller explained that UVic engineering sponsored the team financially and provided them with lab space. “The key for me is that this is an entirely student-driven project,” he said. “It is not something that [the students] have been assigned to do; it is something that they have picked up on their own … a project that they have taken on over and above what is already a fairly rigorous program.”
As the project integrated many different types of engineering, another challenge was the management of a large interdisciplinary team. “On the one hand it was a huge project management challenge, co-ordinating a large number of very busy students, but this was also an opportunity,” said Miller.
“It is very difficult to balance [the project] with a full course load, together with labs,” said Burdyny. “There is no going out on Friday night for pizza. Pizza gets delivered to the lab. We work in the lab [on Friday nights].... It’s a passion for everyone who works on it.... we love it, and that’s why we do it.”