Underwater Robotics Club at NC State University. Sponsorship Book

Transcription

1 Underwater Robotics Club at NC State University Sponsorship Book

2 Table of Contents About Us 3 Seawolf VI 3 Outreach 4 Subteams 4 RoboSub 6 Contact Us 8 Sponsor Benefits 9 2

3 About Us The Underwater Robotics Club at North Carolina State University was founded in We are a student run organization that designs and builds autonomous underwater vehicles(auvs) to participate in the annual RoboSub Competition in San Diego, California. The event challenges teams from around the world to develop robots that complete complex tasks underwater. The Team Our team is composed of students from many different majors, and welcomes new members from any major to participate. Together we work outside of the classroom to improve each other s technical skills and to share our experiences with the community. We take our robot, Seawolf, to schools, recruiting events, festivals, seminars, research symposiums, and other STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) events in the area. Seawolf VI The Underwater Robotics Club s upcoming robot is the vision of our lead mechanical engineer. Striving to design something different than we have ever attempted, we have designed and constructed a machined aluminum chassis with an unprecedented six thrusters for increased stability and control. Also new to Seawolf VI is an analog bandpass filter coupled with a custom designed FPGA and BeagleBone Black for calculating delays. 3

4 Outreach Since many of our members have backgrounds in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) programs we want to ensure that youth today get to have equal, if not better opportunities than we did. Between 2012 and 2013, we spent over 700 hours volunteering our time to the STEM community of North Carolina. Our members are judges, referees, and volunteers for local competitions such as FIRST LEGO League regionals, Science Olympiad State competition and the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) North Carolina Regional. We mentor three local FRC teams, including a Girl Scout team. We also set up booths, teach workshops at museum festivals and regularly visit elementary schools in order to show people real world applications of STEMrelated fields. Subteams ELECTRICAL Seawolf s custom electronic systems are comprised of two boards, stacked with a high-density mezzanine connector between them. These boards provide power, thruster control, servo control and sensor input for the craft. This design is a marked improvement from the disarranged multi-board electronic systems used in previous Seawolf designs. The goal of the electronic system in Seawolf VI is to reduce cable clutter and produce a more reliable and maintainable design. 4

5 SOFTWARE Seawolf s software is organized into independent applications which each execute in a separate process. They can be run independently, making for a highly modular design. To allow these applications to communicate we use a custom interprocess communication (IPC) library called libseawolf. Developed in 2008 by the team, libseawolf has since become a stable independent library. Libseawolf allows applications to seamlessly set and access shared variables, send notifications, and wait for events to complete. Each application talks directly with a central server, called seawolf-hub, using TCP/IP, which allows components of the system to be distributed across multiple machines or even written in different languages. MECHANICAL The mechanical design for Seawolf VI features an octagonal prism shape that is broken into three segments. Each segment contains eight different spots for panels that can be used to mount the various peripherals for the robot such as cameras and thrusters. Inside of the prism is a cylindrical hull that is suspended in the middle. The hull features two shelves with one being dedicated to batteries and the other to our computer and other electronics. To connect the electronics inside to the peripherals on the outside, waterproof Fischer connectors are used. 5

6 RoboSub Competition RoboSub is an annual international competition co-sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research(ONR) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. The goal of this competition is advance the development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles(AUVs). It also serves to cultivate ties between young engineers and organizations developing AUV technologies. In the RoboSub competition, each team of students designs and builds a submersible vehicle that can autonomously navigate and complete an array of tasks. These tasks are designed to test the skills of young engineers and simulate real-world challenges. Tasks: Four bins are arranged in a 2 by 2 matrix, each bin having a distinct shape. The vehicle identifies the shapes then drops a marker in the correct bins. The vehicle fires torpedoes through openings on a target board. 6

7 The manipulator task requires the vehicle to rotate a wheel and pull a lever. Using an acoustic pinger, the vehicle locates and collects an object. Then surfacing inside a PVC octagon. 7

8 Sponsor Us Everything that our club does is not possible without our great sponsors! Contact Ways to sponsor our team Monetary Donations Hardware Donations Software donations Airline Mileage Donations Technical Assistance Wishlist FPGA Board Pneumatic System LED Array Money/resources for travel Machining services Thrusters Waterproof connectors 8

9 List of Benefits Bronze $1000 and less Silver $1000- $2500 Gold $2500- $5000 Diamond $5000+ Logo on our website with a link to your webpage Picture of the team with your donated product (if applicable) Logo on our club banner Logo on competition T-Shirts Access to team resume book Logo on submarine hull Logo on all printed media Logo on prime location of submarine hull Carefully selected location on all printed media 9