Fall 2021 & Spring 2022

My first year of undergrad I found that an old FIRST mentor was working on an autonomous boat for her senior project, and the team was starting a student club to take the boat to competitions. Needless to say I joined. With only FIRST technical experience I was horribly out of my depth, but the senior project always found something for me to do. I showed up to the seniors’ lab hours and machined simple parts, made electrical cables, and asked a ton of questions.

The senior project, Team AMORE (Autonomous Maritime Operations and Robotics Engineering), had been given a WAM-V platform, a 16’ pontoon vessel with a suspension deck that was designed to stay level in rough water. They had to design GNC (guidance, navigation, and control), vision, and propulsion systems for it in time for the student club to take it to Sydney for the 2022 Maritime RobotX Challenge, one of the most competitive marine robotics competitions in the world. And I was one of the students who might end up taking it.

In the spring semester, one of the seniors who was responsible for the group’s 3D printer (an ender3 v2 - money was tight) taught me how to slice and print parts. And after breaking the printer several times (did I mention it was an ender 3?) I quickly learned how to maintain and repair it. I also bought myself the same printer so I could learn how to do more advanced printing without breaking the club’s property. When the seniors graduated the 3D printer passed into possession of the club and I became the person responsible for it.

Summer 2022

Testing the WAM-V over summer break

Fall 2022

In the early summer some of the seniors stayed on or returned periodically to help a few of us in the club who lived nearby to learn how to fully operate the WAM-V, and try to learn the code.

Later on, I was one of three students to take the WAM-V to a the 2022 Coast Guard Response Equipment Deployment and Demonstration for northern Michigan. The event was a collaboration between the Coast Guard, oil, and local environmental groups to showcase the response to an oil spill in the area. We displayed the WAM-V and talked about how autonomous vessels could be used to help in early detection of oil spills by continuously monitoring high-risk areas such as above underwater pipelines and around the paths of tankers and other ships.

At the end of the summer, the club learned that a second senior project had been created to implement a drone to take off and land on the WAM-V, and a few of the original seniors returned again to show the new project the existing autonomy code and run a few last tests before RobotX.

In the fall the club had to get to work right away. The WAM-V was disassembled and shipped to Australia. All the electronics were tested again and again, and spare parts of everything were ordered that could be afforded. Tools were packed and team shirts were ordered. The travel team was picked out, as money came in for tickets, and I made the second round of tickets. Technical documentation and a team video were created and submitted. Everyone was excited. The whole school of engineering was excited.

And then about a month before the competition our faculty advisor informed the club in a meeting that the shipping company made a mistake with U.S. Customs and the shipping container with our WAM-V in it was sitting on a pier in California and the ship it was supposed to be on was halfway across the Pacific.

The club contacted the RobotX organizers to try and find a WAM-V to borrow, and after a few conversations, Team AMORE welcomed new Australian members, students at Queensland University of Technology who had been planning to drop out of RobotX due to lack of members. And so in early November we flew halfway around the world to Sydney, with our GNC system taken apart and distributed between everyone’s suitcases. Except mine, which had the club’s 3D printer, carefully wrapped in my clothes. And when we got there we found the QUT students waiting for us with their WAM-V.

The team at competition in Sydney

At the end of RobotX, our technical documentation was good enough to pull AMORE into 6th place overall. Watching the finals runs and seeing the successes of the top teams inspired me to work towards RobotX 2024.

The experience of working on the WAM-V and competing in RobotX was invaluable to me as an underclassman. I gained a lot of technical knowledge from working with more advanced students and students from literally across the world, as well as a lot about how to work together remotely to achieve a common goal. I gained experience and connections in the fairly small field of marine robotics which I would likely have never heard of otherwise. The numerous major setbacks at competition were a good lesson in not expecting everything to work as planned. And best of all, the whole experience was just really fun.

Links:

Team AMORE’s website

RobotX Documentation

Me and another club member displaying the completed WAM-V at the U.S.C.G. Response Equipment Deployment and Demonstration

The combined LSSU-QUT WAM-V

We arrived a day before the competition began, and after a few hours of Sydney, made our way to our accommodations for a strategy meeting and our first good night’s sleep in about three days. RobotX was hectic, to say the least. We spent the first three days implementing our two sets of systems together. Finally we got on the water and had two very successful days, completing one of the seven tasks. The next day 35+ knot steady winds kept all of the WAM-Vs off the water. The day after an electrical malfunction permanently grounded our WAM-V for the rest of the event. However, the new senior project’s drone was able to complete a second task, putting us in a three-way tie for sixth place. We packed up and watched finals.

As a sophomore, my ability to participate was more limited than some other members of the team. The printer which I had brought for replacements sat mostly unused, although I was able to save another team’s drone with an overnight print for them. I also assembled the racquetball launcher that I had helped develop in a research class (link), which was ready to go onto the WAM-V the day it failed. Finally, I took photos and videos of the event, and updated the team’s social media constantly.

Team AMORE was able to spend a day exploring Sydney after the competition was over, which was almost as fun!