11 August 2009

Robotic sub wins global competition

After a flawless 11.5-minute run through a complex course of underwater tasks in the final round, Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team won the 12th annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International/Office of Naval Research competition in San Diego.

The Cornell undergraduates—32 in all, 12 of whom traveled to the competition—competed against 29 other teams in the five-day competition.

Cornell’s Nova dodged barbed wire, fired torpedoes, and retrieved a pinging briefcase.

The team’s new vehicle, Nova, was the only sub to complete every element of the course, which included dodging barbed wire, firing torpedoes, and retrieving a pinging briefcase. The team won $10,000.

“We had a very, very reliable system from day one,” said team leader Erin Fischell.

That reliability came from work that started with planning and designing last fall, then moved into hours upon hours of pool testing. “We had pool tests nearly every day this summer, getting practice and identifying the problems we would encounter,” she said.

The team also benefited from a strong team memory. “[The Cornell] team has been doing this 10 years,” Fischell said, and each year’s team has paid particular attention to lessons learned by predecessors.

That attention paid off at the competition. “We brought backups for every part we made ourselves, but we never had to use any of them,” Fischell said. “We made this vehicle reliable and usable enough that we never had to open it up.”

The team is already working on new challenges, including possibly building a vehicle to search for a shipwreck in Cayuga Lake, at the request of the Ithaca/Tompkins Convention and Visitors Bureau.

For related information, go to www.isa.org/productivity.