On March 12th, 2011, the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV) project team hosted a workshop for Girl Scouts intending to earn their Science in Action badges. CUAUV has held this workshop for the past four years, and the attendance has always been large. This year, fifty Girl Scouts were present at the event, and all of them were entertained by the activities prepared by the team. All of the girls cycled through five stations, and at each station, they learned principles of science through hands on demonstrations, such as how sound travels by making a telephone out of two cups and a string and how bridges support heavy loads by making a bridge out of newspaper.

The sensor team has made some improvements from last year’s model. This year, the team is using three boards and a custom-built IMU instead of last year’s 3DM-GX1. The IMU, or Inertial Measurement Unit, integrates two COTS sensors, reports linear acceleration and angular velocity, and is easier to customize. It is also less than half the price as last year’s 3DM-GX1. Stay tuned to our weekly status updates regarding the recent finish of our design process...

The Structure sub-team has finalized the overall structure of the 2010-2011 competition vehicle this past week. Besides being more compact due to the shorter hull, there will be no external skeleton structure. The sub-team has also improved the vehicle’s structural strength by replacing the previous plastic tubing with aluminum tubing. Stay tuned to our weekly status updates regarding the recent finish of our design process...

The first team social of 2011 was… competitive. From intense X-box games to Quelf to Settlers of Catan, the members of the CUAUV team brought their game faces last night. Despite the very strange noises that arose from those engaged in Quelf, the team had a great time playing games, relaxing, and eating cake. Maybe the Quelf players laughed and asymptote’ed each other carelessly, but those playing Settlers were concentrated in their quest to conquer Catan! Everyone had a great time, and we look forward to our next team social in March!

The Racks and Caps sub-team has recently finished the design for the Upper Hull Pressure Vessel (UHPV). Since the purpose of the UHPV is to keep the surrounding water out of the machine, the Racks and Caps team has made sure the material used is not only waterproof but bulletproof as well. The electronic rack, which holds up the electronic boards, is almost finished. The Racks and Caps team has also installed larger fans to cool the running computer. However, for CUAUV, bigger does not always mean better, because this year’s UHPV model is about half the size of last year’s. And finally, the Racks and Caps team just installed a total of 5 layers to hold the being-built electronic boards. Stay tuned to our weekly status updates regarding the recent finish of our design process...

After a restful break, we are excited to begin a busy semester before the competition! We have met many of the deadlines we had set last semester for the vehicle. On top of continuing to design and build our vehicle, we have many business and public relations events coming up! We are running our annual Girl Scouts workshop, which provides the girls an opportunity to earn their Science in Action badges. We also are collaborating with Cornell's Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers for a science and technology outreach program with a local middle school. Finally, we are participating in BOOM, an annual showcase held by Cornell of student research and creativity in digital technology and applications.

For sponsors interested in recruiting Cornell undergraduates on-campus, we plan to host company information sessions during Cornell's Engineering and Technical Spring Career Fair. Moreover, we can supply a résumé book for those interested in hiring CUAUV members. We look forward to seeing you at the fair!

This month, the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV) Team's latest vehicle, codenamed Zephyr, will upgrade to a new generation of Intel® Core™ processors. The second generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor-based hardware will provide increased processing power for the team's computationally intensive machine vision algorithms, while lowering the overall power consumption, compared to the current Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor.

The full press release can be viewed under the "Press and Papers" tab. Thank you Intel!

We have uploaded photos of Tachyon taken using an infrared camera to our Fall 2010 image gallery!
By taking photos of Tachyon before and after running vision software, we found out that our computer heats to over 200⁰F…

Huge thanks to Mark from the Cornell Department of Design & Environmental Analysis and Shawn from Cornell’s Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County for lending us the camera!

   

Before running vision software                After running vision software