AUVCUCORNELL UNIVERSITY

AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE TEAM

2010-2011 Sponsorship Packet

CUAUVB62 Upson HallCornell UniversityIthaca, NY 14853 | (607) 255-4041 | http://www.cuauv.org | http://twitter.com/cuauv

The Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team (CUAUV) consists of undergraduate and graduate students who are exploring the cutting edge of unmanned underwater vehicle technology.

Each year, CUAUV competes in the international autonomous underwater vehicle competition organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and held at the Space and Naval Warfare Command Research facility in San Diego, CA.

For the past two years, CUAUV has placed 1st in the competition out of approximately 30 teams. The team has also placed 1st in technical design for the past 9 years. The team hopes to continue with its success next year. The 2011 vehicle is based off of the 2010 vehicle and improves upon its previous design. The team depends on the generous support of its sponsors and could not exist without them. CUAUV welcomes monetary and in kind donations to help support our endeavours in creating and improving autonomous underwater technology.

About the Team

CUAUV 2010-2011 Team

The development of the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a year-long process. The team first spends time designing and building the vehicle. This is followed by testing, integration, and competition preparation. The competition challenges imitate the many obstacles in current underwater research our industry faces.

• This year marks CUAUV’s 12th Anniversary • The team’s 41 student members come from three of Cornell’s Colleges and represent 10 different majors• 3 Cornell University faculty advisors are involved in the project: Professors Graeme Bailey, Bruce Land, and Alan Zehnder• CUAUV has placed in the top 10 every year since it was founded• Over 20,000 man-hours per year are spent working on the vehicle

Apart from excelling at the competition, we are at the forefront of discovering and implementing research techniques that help the industry overcome problems in the underwater robotics field. We posses a team of great talent and our success has drawn tremendous exposure from industry leaders and researchers alike.

Team Facts

Competition OverviewEach year, CUAUV competes in the annual International RoboSub Competition at SSC Pacific’s TRANSDEC pool in San Diego, CA. The competition is co-sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research with the goal of advancing the development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) by challenging a new generation of engineers to perform realistic missions in an underwater environment. This event also serves to foster ties between young engineers and the organizations developing AUV technologies.

The competition mission elements and tasks are designed to simulate real world challenges faced by the Navy. The obstacles challenge each AUV’s visual recognition of objects as well as navigation and acoustic sensing. The following images of mission elements are taken by CUAUV’s 2010 vehicle, Tachyon, at the 2010 AUVSI/ONR competition.

To begin the course, the vehicle must pass through a validating gate.

Three different colored buoys of varying height are moored to the floor, the vehicle must strike two different buoys in a given order.

The vehicle must pass through a horizontal pipe approximately 10 feet above the floor.

Four bins are arranged in a row, the vehicle must drop up to two markers in specified bins.

The vehicle must fire torpedos through a specified colored “window” from a set of four different windows.

The vehicle is directed to an object via an acoustic pinger, it must then free the object and surface with it in the recovery zone.

Design of the 2011 Vehicle, Drekar, is nearing completion. To challenge engineers on the team, CUAUV began implementing changes to the vehicle architecture that allow for research-based missions. Our goals for 2011 are:

• Improving vehicle maneuverability

• Achieving greater depths

• Active acoustic capabilities

• Building custom thrusters

• Simulating TRANSDEC conditions

2011 Vehicle Overview

Drekar, the 2011 competition vehicle, at a glance: • Dry weight: 75 lb

• Overall dimensions: 42” L x 30” W x 18” H

• Pressure vessels: One main hull for electronics, five secondary hulls for indi-

vidual sub-systems

• Propulsion: Two horizontal (VideoRay), two vertical and two strafing thrusters

(Seabotix)

• Power: Two 4450 mAh lithium-polymer batteries

Surge ThrusterSeconadry Tank

Strafing Thruster

Torpedo TubesVertical Thruster

High Pressure Tank Valve Box

DVL

Battery Pod

HP Camera

SolidWorks Rendering of Drekar

Drekar Cross Section Rendering

Software OverviewThe software on the vehicle is powered by a mobile quad-core Intel Sandy Bridge processor on a mini-ITX motherboard, along with an Intel SSD. Our mature software stack starts with Debian GNU/Linux and features a shared memory system for centralized vehicle state with interfaces for both C/C++ and Python programs.

Software stack

Mechanical OverviewDrekar’s mechanical systems consist of the vehicle structure, upper hull, actuator, and external enclosure subsystems. The structure and upper hull systems make up the physical shape of the vehicle. The structure consists of a tubular aluminum frame which provides secure mounting points for the vehicle’s pressure vessels, sensors, and actuators. The upper hull provides waterproof protection for the vehicle’s main electronics boards and the computer, while allowing easy access to the electronics, and serveing as the interface between external sensors and internal boards via underwater connectors. The torpedo launcher, marker dropper, and grabber make up the Actuators system, and are all pneumatically powered. Finally, external enclosures is comprised of all the smaller pressure vessels, including the hydrophones enclosure, sensor boom, and camera enclosures.

Sensors are fused in a Kalman filter to provide noise-free vehicle position, velocity, and orientation. The vision system features a multi-threaded and extensible framework based on the OpenCV computer vision library to easily manage capture sources and vision processing modules. These modules use techniques such as multi-colorspace segmentation and statistical moment analysis to quickly isolate visual mission components. Our tree-based mission system allows us to write flexible missio ns for testing, competition, and research purposes.

SolidWorks rendering of Drekar’s structure

Sensors OverviewAn advanced sensor suite is key to the vehicle providing useful data to the users, as well as allowing accurate control of the vehicle’s movements.The vehicle has multiple FireWire AVT Guppy cameras to provide both downward and forward views from the sub. It is also equipped with an advanced acoustic system (hydrophones) which include a passive array built with four Reson piezoelectric elements. Signal processing is done using a combination of analog filtering and digital signal processing on an Analog Devices SHARC 21369. With this system, heading and elevation to a pinger can be computed to within one degree. This year we are working to expand the system to include active element capabilities using an entirely new output board with custom outside-the-rails amplifiers to drive elements and a new architecture using a hybrid

Power system circuit boards

Electrical OverviewThe Drekar electrical system has a 1.5-3 hour runtime using two Lithium polymer batteries. The entire power system is hot-swappable, including changing between battery and bench power. Internally the sub uses regulated voltage rails at +5, +12, and +24 Volts. Custom designed sensor and control boards use a CUAUV-designed serial protocol to support rapid integration with the main software stack.

DSP+FPGA processing back-end.

The vehicle is also equipped with sensors that provide feedback on dynamics to allow for precise control. This year, a custom 3-axis compass based on Honeywell chips will be used to measure vehicle heading, while depth is measured by an MSI pressure sensor. The team is also developing a custom IMU to measure angular velocity and linear acceleration on all three axes. Another key sensor is the Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) which returns vehicle velocity in surge and sway. This allows for closed-loop velocity control, giving the vehicle the ability to hover.

Throughout the semester, our team organizes multiple outreach events to better acquaint the greater Cornell and Ithaca communities with our team and our sponsors. These events include a Prospective Students Workshop, Into the Streets, our Open Pool Test, and a Girl Scouts workshop.

Outreach Programs

Open Pool TestThe Cornell and Ithaca communities are invited to Teagle pool to watch the previous year’s competition vehicle maneuver through a replication of the previous year’s obstacle course. The open pool test encourages the Ithaca community to take an interest in engineering, especially in the field of underwater robotics.

Girl Scouts Workshop Our team hosts an annual workshop for Girl Scouts to help the girls earn their “Science in Action” badge. Girl Scouts rotate through several stations led by CUAUV members and participate in different hands on activities to learn about principles of science and engineering.

Lake TestingIn order to better simulate TRANSDEC conditions and prepare for future re-search, the team runs tests in Cayuga Lake in partnership with the Floating Classroom project. Our goal is to in-crease vehicle durability so that the vehicle can dive deeper for longer periods of time in harsh lake environ-ments. We also collect data from the lake to aid in environmental research.

Ithaca SciencenterDuring our presentation at the Ithaca Sciencenter, we invite children from the audience to participate in vehicle demos such as torpedo launching and image recognition. We are excited about bringing hands-on science activities to Ithaca’s youth and introducing children to science and engineering.

• New Doppler Velocity Log to gain higher

precision navigation data

• New and improved sensors

• More powerful thrusters

• Custom hydrophone potting

Your support will go towards a variety of team projects, including:

SponsorshipsOur achievements would not be possible without the generous support of individuals and industry partners like yourselves.

Some ways to sponsor the team are:

• Monetary Donations

• Hardware Donations

• Software Donations

• Airline Mileage Donations

Some of our sponsors are:

Platinum (Over $5,000)• Mention of company sponsorship/company logo on tri-annual newsletter sent to alumni, staff and other sponsors• Prime location of company logo on competition vehicle• Company name on ‘11 competition uniform• Company name, logo and website link on the team website (cuauv.org/sponsors)• Company name on ‘11 competition paper, poster, brochure and sponsorship packet• First Priority in company info-session hosting with team and access to team resume book

Gold ($2,500-5,000)• Company logo on competition vehicle• Company name on ‘11 competition uniform• Company name, logo and website link on the team website (cuauv.org/sponsors)• Company name on ‘11 competition paper, poster and brochure• Priority in company info-session hosting with team and access to team resume book

Silver ($1000 to $2,500)• Company name on ‘11 competition uniform• Company name, logo and website link on the team website (cuauv.org/sponsors)• Company name on ‘11 competition paper, poster and brochure• Opportunity for company info-session hosting with team and access to team resume book

Bronze (Up to $1000)• Company name, logo and website link on the team website (cuauv.org/sponsors)• Company name on ‘11 competition paper, poster and brochure• Opportunity for company info-session hosting with team and access to team resume book

Individual/Alumni Sponsorship• Recognition in next quarterly newsletter and alumni mailings (with permission)• Receive the same benefits as corporate sponsors• Supporting CUAUV’s tradition of excellence beyond your years on the team

Sponsorship Levels

AUVCU

CUAUV welcomes monetary and gifts in kind donations. You can sponsor CUAUV by contacting us at:

B62 Upson HallCornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-4041www.cuauv.org

OR go to

https://www.giving.cornell.edu/give/

Select “Other” under Designation and enter “CUAUV” in the Other designation or special instructions area