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IRLab Student Enters AUV Competition
Catherine Harris, a PhD student in the IRLab, and previously an undergraduate in the School of Computer Science recently took part in the Student Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge Europe (SAUC-E). She writes about her experience below.
SAUC-E is a multidisciplinary competition which challenges students to design, build and program an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable of completing a series of underwater tasks. This year’s competition took place in a dock at the NATO Underwater Research Centre (NURC) in La Spezia, Italy and required vehicles to pass through submerged gates, identify and free a tethered buoy, follow a pipeline and survey a section of the dock - all completely autonomously!
Teams from nine European universities took part, including the University of Southampton whom I joined for both the 2009 and 2010 competitions, after spending a placement year at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton in 2008/2009.
The Southampton vehicle, Delphin 2, is new this year, measures approximately two metres long and is a traditional torpedo-shaped AUV. Capable of both high-speed “flight-style” manoeuvring and low-speed precise control (more commonly associated with remotely operated vehicles), Delphin 2 has the potential to be a very versatile platform.
Over the course of the competition week, we were plagued by problems with the vehicle’s thrusters and sensor integration, but had success with surveying a section of the dock and passing through the gates which meant that we were the first team to qualify for the final. In the end, we didn’t make the top three, but learnt a lot for next year and had a brilliant time. I personally loved the opportunity to launch the AUV from an inflatable dinghy in the Italian sunshine - not something I expected to be doing when I started studying Computer Science!