Input Shaping Control Research in Support of an Undergraduate Student Exchange

Agency: Kumoh National Institute of Technology
Amount: ~$2650 (3,000,000Korean won)
Duration: 1/1/18 - 12/31/18
Summary: This project represents a partnership between Kumoh National Institute of Technology and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette). The primary component of the project is the travel of a group of undergraduate researchers from Kumoh National Institute of Technology to UL Lafayette in the spring semester of 2018 for an approximate six-week stay. The students will work closely with PI Vaughan and one graduate student from PI Vaughan's lab. Their funding for their travel will be completed supported by Kumoh National Institute of Technology, which will also provide 3,000,000KRW ($2,651 based on the exchange rates of September 22, 2017) to the PI in support of the Korean students’ work.

A Progression of Robotics Projects and Competitions for GEAR UP

Agency: Lafayette Parish School System (LPSS) GEAR UP
Amount: $64,970 + $64,970 UL Lafayette cost-share
Duration: 11/1/17 - 10/31/23
Summary: Robotics provides an excellent vehicle for teaching a variety of topics. Robotics also presents an excellent opportunity to promote hands-on and project-driven educational experiences and the chance to make education fun through contests. The activities proposed will take the students through a progression of robotics projects of increasing complexity, exposing them to a wide range of topics and preparing them for rigorous post-secondary work.

Promoting Aerospace Research and Education through ARLISS at UL Lafayette

Agency: Louisiana Space Grant Consortium (LaSPACE)
Program: Senior Design Program
Amount: $3948 + $1579 cost share
Duration: 10/15/17 - 10/14/18
Summary: This project seeks to support travel of a senior projects team from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette to compete at ARLISS - A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites. ARLISS is held on the Black Rock Playa (a dry lake bed) in Nevada in mid-September. It was established to give students hands-on experience in the design, construction, testing, and launch of space systems.

ARLISS participation by UL Lafayette was jump-started by a previous LaSPACE grant. This proposal will support the continuation of the promotion of aerospace research and education at UL Lafayette through ARLISS. The senior design team will develop their design in the fall of 2017 and spring and summer of 2018, then attend the ARLISS competition in September. Following the contest, they will use the results of the ARLISS competition to evaluate their initial design and iterate on it. This is an opportunity not often presented to capstone design students, but one that is crucial to a successful design process.

This project will begin in the fall semester of 2017 and end one year later, in October 2018. The project will be evaluated using the success of the teams in the ARLISS competition, the interest and participation in the UL Lafayette ARLISS team, and the capstone design teams’ performance in the capstone course relative to their peers.

Automated Peeling of Louisiana Crawfish

Agency: Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board
Amount: $201,563
Duration:7/1/17 - 6/30/20
Summary: This proposal represents a partnership between the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board working toward an automated peeling system for crawfish. The primary, final deliverable at the conclusion of the proposed three-year project duration is a thoroughly-tested reference design with a robust, learning control system.

Cable-Driven Robots for Inspection, Maintenance, and Rescue

Agency: Louisiana Board of Regents
Program: ITRS with HiBot, Corp as partner
Amount: $162,249 + $75,000 in-kind + $67,799 UL Lafayette cost-share
Duration: 6/1/15 - 6/31/18
Summary: By many accounts, the infrastructure of the United States and Louisiana is in dire need of main- tenance, repair, and, in many cases, even basic inspection. However, these tasks require significant investment, both in dollars and in inspection time. Inspection tasks are often tedious work and require significant manpower. Expanding the use of robotics for these tasks can not only save significant money and time, but also improve the fidelity of the results, while reducing the burden on human inspectors.

This proposal represents a partnership with HiBot, an award-winning robotics company and world- wide leader in the use of robotics for inspection and rescue. They have customers in countries around the world, including Japan, Canada, and the United States. Recently, HiBot has begun the development of a cable-suspended-and-driven robot system that could be used for a variety of inspection, maintenance, and rescue tasks.

The primary objective of this proposal is the advancement of robotic inspection via the development of design and control techniques for cable-suspended-and-driven robotic systems. These cable- driven mechanisms can have larger workspaces and move more efficiently than traditionally-driven systems; simply put, these systems have to move a smaller percentage of their total mass. Cable- driven systems are particularly suited to inspection and maintenance of vertical structures, including ship hulls, bridges, dams, and buildings. However, because they are both driven by and suspended from cables, they are susceptible to vibration and can be difficult to control in adverse conditions. The proposed project will develop methods for both the mechanical design and control of these systems.

Reducing Oscillation of Ship-Mounted Cranes Used for ASV Retrieval

Agency: Louisiana Board of Regents
Program: ITRS with C&C Technologies, then ASV, Ltd as partner
Amount: $136,140 + $145,011 in-kind + $60,004 UL Lafayette cost-share
Duration: 6/1/14 - 9/30/17
Summary: Cranes are a ubiquitous part of industry throughout the world and have been a primary heavy lifter for centuries. While there have been substantial improvements since the earliest cranes, modern cranes still share one limitation with them: payload oscillation. Payload oscillation reduces efficiency and creates unsafe operating conditions. If external disturbances are introduced, the complexity of controlling crane payload oscillation is further increased.

This proposal represents a partnership with C & C Technologies, a leader in the hydrographic sur- veying industry whose customers include the oil and gas industry, the telecommunications industry, and the U.S. government. One primary surveying tool of C & C Technologies is the Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV). ASVs are often launched and retrieved from larger ocean-going vessels using a crane-based system. However, both the efficiency and safety of the launch-and-retrieval system are limited by the oscillation induced by a combination of the crane's intended motion and disturbances resulting from ocean and weather conditions.

The primary objective of this proposal is the advancement of crane-control techniques to include the reduction of oscillation resulting from the large disturbances common to the ship-mounted ASV launch-and-retrieval system. This will enable safer and more efficient ASV operations. Broader impacts of this work include improvements to many shipboard crane operations, where large am- plitude external disturbances are common, and reduced Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) exposure from cranes mounted on drilling and oil-production platforms, where cranes are used to load and unload equipment and supplies.

Establishing ARLISS at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Agency: Louisiana Space Grant Consortium (LaSPACE)
Program: Senior Design Program
Amount: $12,822 + $6,891 UL Lafayette cost-share
Duration: 1/6/14 - 1/5/15
Summary: This project seeks to establish an ongoing University of Louisiana at Lafayette presence at ARLISS - A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites. ARLISS is held on the Black Rock Playa (a dry lake bed) in Nevada in late September. It was established to give students hands-on experience in the design, construction, testing, and launch of space systems.

To jumpstart UL Lafayette participation in ARLISS, one year of support for a capstone senior design team is requested. A team of 3+ students will develop their design in the spring semester, then attend the ARLISS competition in September. For the remainder of the fall semester, they will use the results of the ALRISS competition to evaluate their initial design and iterate on it. This is an opportunity not often presented to capstone design students, but one that is crucial to a successful design process.

This project will begin with the spring semester of 2014 and end in December 2014. The project will be evaluated using the success of the teams in the ARLISS competition, the interest and participation in the newly formed UL Lafayette ARLISS team, and the capstone design team’s performance in the capstone course relative to their peers.

Vibration-free Control of Cable-suspended Robots

Industry Partner: HiBot, Corp
Amount: $9,172
Duration: 1/1/16 - 12/31/16
Summary: This proposal represents a partnership with HiBot, an award-winning robotics company and world- wide leader in the use of robotics for inspection and rescue. They have customers in countries around the world, including Japan, Canada, and the United States. Recently, HiBot has begun the development of a cable-suspended-and-driven robot system that could be used for a variety of inspection, maintenance, and rescue tasks.

The primary objective of this proposal is the advancement of control techniques for cable-suspended- and-driven robotic systems. These cable-driven mechanisms can have larger workspaces and move more efficiently than traditionally-driven systems; simply put, these systems have to move a smaller percentage of their total mass. Cable-driven systems are particularly suited to inspection and maintenance of vertical structures, including ship hulls, bridges, dams, and buildings.

However, because they are both driven by and suspended from cables, they are susceptible to vibration and can be difficult to control in adverse conditions. The proposed project will develop methods for the control of these systems. The primary deliverables of this work are i.) control algorithms to enable low-vibration motion of wire-driven robots and ii.) example implementations of these algorithms suitable for use on HiBot robots.

Using Robotics to Improve Efficiency of Operations at Professional Arts Pharmacy

Industry Partner: Professional Arts Pharmacy
Amount: $47,881
Duration: 6/10/14 - 1/31/15
Summary: The goal of this project is to develop a robot to automate the evacuation of a large number of tubes, similar in size and shape to traditional toothpaste tubes. The industrial partner, Professional Arts Pharmacy, receives shipments of 10,000 tubes every two weeks. Each tube is individually packaged, and its contents must be evacuated for use. This process is currently done entirely by hand, with workers processing 1,000 tubes per day on average. This application fits nicely into the popular "Four Ds" of robotics, which propose that if a task is dirty, dull, dangerous, or diffcult, then it is a good candidate for robotics and automation.

Making the Anaconda Autonomous

Industry Partner: Swiftships Shipbuilders
Amount: $127,632 + $20,378 equipment — 50% co-PI with Dr. Arun Lakhotia from CACS
Duration: 8/15/13 – 8/14/14
Summary: This document will describe the proposed tasks for the first year of collaboration between Swiftships and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette). The first year of work will include remote, human control of the Anaconda and development and testing of a trajectory-tracking con- troller for use in obstacle-free environments. All experimental trials will take place at Swiftships's New Iberia facilities.

Improving the Core Robotics Kit in the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum

Program: UL Lafayette STEP Grant
Amount: $4,903
Duration: 8/1/17 - 7/31/18
Summary: In MCHE 201: Introduction to Engineering Design, students are taught high-level mechanical design and technical communication, as well as basic robotics skills, through a series of robotics projects. The course ends in a 6-8 week final project and associated robot contest, in which teams of 3-4 students compete. Each of these teams is issued a kit of robotics components for use during the final project. This proposal seeks to fund the purchase of components needed to dramatically improve the core of these robotics kits, directly benefiting the approximately 150 students per academic year that enroll in MCHE201.

In current versions of MCHE201, students are asked to buy a basic robotic kit instead of a textbook. For the final project, the student-purchased kit is supplemented in order to create a sufficiently-open design space for student projects. However, the existing kits rely on breadboard wiring and utilize a hobby-level microcontroller. This proposal would correct these deficiencies, pushing the kit closer to the types of systems students will see in their professional careers, while improving its robustness and substantially reducing semester-to-semester maintenance costs.

Supporting Hands-on Robotics Projects in the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum

Program: UL Lafayette STEP Grant
Amount: $6,662
Duration: 7/1/16 - 6/31/17
Summary: Robotics presents an excellent tool to teach, and learn, about a wide variety of mechanical engineering topics. It is also a rapidly-expanding area of need for both local and global industry. The experience of building a robot while learning about mechanical design and technical communication has significant benefits for students, while providing a fun way to learn. In MCHE201: Introduction to Engineering Design, students are taught mechanical design, technical communication, and basic robotics skills through a series of robotics projects. This proposal seeks to fund the purchase of components needed to dramatically improve the robotics kits used in the class. Approximately 150 students per academic year will directly benefit from these improvements.

Currently, students are asked to buy a basic robotic kit instead of a textbook. However, this student-purchased kit needs to be supplemented in order to create a sufficiently-open design space for the robot projects. So, currently, each team of 3–4 students is provided with a kit of basic robotics parts for use in their projects. However, the existing kits still lack some components critical to modern, robust robotic design. The kits lack the parts necessary for wireless communication, fine positioning, and linear actuation. This proposal seeks to fill these holes in the capabilities of the current kit.

Using Hands-On Robotics Projects to Teach Mechanical Design and Technical Communication

Program: UL Lafayette Educational Grant
Amount: $2,157
Duration: 1/1/14 - 12/31/14
Summary: Robotics projects provide an excellent vehicle to teach both mechanical design and technical communication. The complexity of even basic robotics projects enforces the necessity of a formal and objective design process. This complexity also necessitates clear and concise communication. However, to include any significant robotics projects in classes of 50+ students per semester, a significant investment in both time and money is required.

This proposal seeks to fund the purchase of the core components needed for 25 robotics kits for use in MCHE 201: Introduction to Engineering Design, a new, required class in the recently-revised Mechanical Engineering curriculum at UL Lafayette. In initial versions of the class, students will be asked to buy a basic robotic kit instead of a textbook. However, this student-purchased kit needs to be supplemented in order to create a sufficiently-open design space for student projects. The openness of the design space is crucial to reinforcing the high-level mechanical design process that the students are learning. The student teams will also be required to report on their design activities.

I have been a part approximately $148,000 in donations, including a significant donation in support of my lab’s entry into the 2016 Maritime RobotX Challenge. I have been personally responsible for equipment donations to that project, including two NVIDIA GPUs used for machine leanring applications and a VectorNAV VN-300 dual-antenna Inertial Navigation System (INS), which is a combination of a GPS and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with some embedded processing. In addition, I have orchestrated a large equipment donation of 40 kits of pneumatic components for inclusion in the kits issued to MCHE 201: Introduction to Engineering Design students for use in their final projects. These donations are summarized in the table below.

Much of what is presented on the entirety of this application could be included again in this section. Upon my arrival in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, there was no active research in system dynamics, automation, controls, and/or robotics. I understand that there was once activity in this area, with particular focus on vibration analysis and controls needs of the oil and gas industry. This work led to (from my understanding) the first or one of the first patents awarded within the College of Engineering. However, that activity had largely ceased by the time I arrived here in August 2012. I am also unaware of any robotics or autonomous vehicles research that was ongoing within the department at the time of my arrival here.

Since I joined the UL Lafayette faculty, I’ve built a lab that has generated over ~$1,171,138 in total funding (including donations), graduated 12 M.S. students with two more expected in May, and involved 47 undergraduate students in the research process. I effectively used the startup funding provided to me to build the foundation for proposals that have provided additional equipment and support for both graduate and undergraduate students. I have received both industry and state funding and am confident that federal funding will join that list soon. Our work regularly appears in the local media, enhancing the stature of the department, college, and university.

I have also greatly expanded the international reach of both our work within my research area and as a department and college. I have hosted visiting researchers from Brazil, China, Japan, and Korea. I have also sent our students abroad; graduate students from my lab have spent two weeks working with our industry parter HiBot in Japan, two months at Tokyo Institute of Technology as part of an NSF East Asia Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) Fellowship, and two months at Kumoh National Institute of Technology in Korea as part of an NSF East Asia Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI). I’ve been invited to give lecture series at Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, in Shandong Province, China, at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in Wuhan, China, and Kumoh National Institute of Technology in Gumi, South Korea.

MCHE 201: Introduction to Engineering Design was a new course as part of the MCHE curriculum change in 2013 and was taught for the first time in Spring 2015. The class teaches the engineering design process and technical communication through a series of four projects, ending in a robotics project that last for approximately the second half of the semester. Through these projects, the students get hands-on experience and significant technical communication practice, generating six written reports and giving five presentations during the semester. In recent semesters, due to class size constraints, students have actually submitted videos of their presentations, rather than presenting live during the class period.

To date, I have raised $13,722 through internal UL Lafayette grants in support of MCHE201 and orchestrated the donation of 40 pneumatics kits, at an estimated total value of over $10,000. The funding has allowed us to provide each team a kit of mechatronic components for use during their final project. I have also created eight instructional videos for content in the course and publish all lecture notes along with an audio recording of the lecture. Finally, we provide open lab hours for the students to develop and test their robots for the final project. We typically offer 15+ hours per week of open lab time, of which I have, in each semester to date, personally covered at least half.

Mini-Projects
In terms of the class, I call the first three projects that the students complete mini-projects, as they are a much smaller scale than the final project for the class. For each project, the students work in teams of 3-4 students, which are randomly assigned and different for every project. The goal of the random assignment is to help our students learn to work with people other than their friends and with people who may have different cultural backgrounds and interests than them.

For the first mini-project, completed during the first two weeks of the semester, each team of students must design a tower to support a tennis ball as high as possible. The tower must be able to be built in less than 45 minutes with 4 ounces of spaghetti, one roll of scotch tape, and no other tools. Its base must fit within a standard letter size piece of paper. The twist that enhances the educational value of this exercise is that the teams do not build their own tower. Each team must write instructions for building their tower. The instructions are then given to another team in the class, who builds the tower. With this twist in the project, the primary educational objective is also revealed. The importance of clear, concise technical communication is immediately evident in the differences between the tower designs and their build. This project frames one of the core tenants of the class, that effective technical communication is a vital part of being an engineer.

In the second mini-project, the students, in new, random teams of 3-4, complete a full conceptual-design cycle for an entry into the ARLISS competition. ARLISS - A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites - is held on the Black Rock Playa (a dry lake bed) in Nevada in late September. It was established to give students hands-on experience in the design, construction, testing, and launch of space systems. This paper-only design process gives the students their first experience working through an objective design process, supported by the tools that they have seen in lecture in the weeks before. Through this project, they generate one report and give one presentation on their design.

In the third mini-project, the students complete a mechanical dissection of an $6 Oral-B toothbrush. This cheap toothbrush really is an excellent piece of engineering. To be able to sell the toothbrush for $6, Oral-B engineers used a variety of Design for X techniques to distill the product down its core features. It provides the students with a hands-on experience of the Design for X material that is covered in lecture. They document their analysis of the design through one report and one presentation.

Programming and Mechatronics
Another major component of the class is an introduction to programming, a first for many of our students. From Spring 2015 until Spring 2017, this programming was based around the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit, at the core of which is an Arduino-based microcontroller. Each student purchases their own kit, instead of an expensive textbook. In Fall 2017, I began asking the students to buy a kit whose components that I picked out explicitly for the class and which is based around a more-powerful microcontroller, the pyboard. The pyboard allows the class to move away from the Arduino language into Python, a language used in my later courses and on a much greater scale in the robotics and controls industry.

In addition to dedicating multiple weeks of lecture to introduce the core concepts to the students, I provide over 90 example scripts (~45 in each language the class has used) to the support their programming exercises, along with 22 example circuits drawn in Fritzing. The source code for the scripts and raw, editable Fritzing files are all publicly available on the class GitHub repository.

Following the introduction to the components of the student-purchased kit, the students are introduced to the kit of components that each team is given in support of their final project. These components were purchased through the UL Lafayette Educational Grant, the UL Lafayette STEP Grants, and donation of pneumatics kits from Parker Hannifin discussed in the introduction of this section. The components in the kit include a 12VDC, 5A power supply; one stepper and two brushed DC motors; an electric linear actuator; a brushed DC motor driver; a pneumatic actuator, solenoid valve, tank, and supporting components; and an infrared distance sensor.

Final Project
For the bulk of the second half of the semester, the class is structured around helping the students progress through the design process for their final, robotics project. Each semester, the contest has a different theme; the themes have ranged from Festival International de Louisiane to James Bond to Star Wars, as summarized in the table below. The project ends in contest that, starting in the spring semester of 2017, is held in Blackham Coliseum. Family, friends, College of Engineering Faculty and Staff, past students, High-school robotics clubs, and local Industry are all invited to and attend the contest.

In the progression through the design process toward a complete robot, the students teams enter their devices in three preliminary contests. In the first, each student has to build a mechanical-only device to complete a subset of the contests tasks. This is done to ensure that every student does at least some minor hands-on design and fabrication work.

In the next preliminary contest, the student devices are again asked to complete a subset of the full contest tasks and compete on the four-sided competition track alone. Prior to this test of their design, the students will have submitted their first report and presentation for the project, outlining their understanding of the problem and the engineering specifications that result from that understanding. This preliminary contest is meant to both test that understanding and help the students begin to develop a device for the final contest. The testing and following revision is a critical part of MCHE201; it is stressed throughout the entire semester that the design process is nonlinear and iterative. We must continually work to better understand the problem at hand during the design process, not stick with our initial “gut” feeling about the problem or what design is best.

Approximately one week prior to the final contest, the student teams compete in another preliminary contest. In this contest, the devices must meet the full rule set of the contest and all points are available. In addition, this is the first time that the student robots compete with other teams on the four-sided arena. Prior to this contest, the students will have completed their final concept evaluation reporting and presentation. So, the contest again serves as a test of their understanding of the problem and underlying design assumptions. It also again forces the students progress in their developing a device for the final contest.

The final contest consist of two components. During the first hour, the students give science-fair-style presentations of their designs to judges, who include faculty, staff, graduate students, and industry partner. The second component of the contest is the actual robot competition itself.

Following the contest, the students submit a final report and presentation, outlining their design process and making a critical analysis of it, given the results from the final contest.

A Rocket Launch for International Student Satellites (ARLISS), held on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada each September. For ARLISS, the members of the AEROPAC rocket club provide rockets to launch the student satellites. The student projects are not actually launched into space, but rather to approximately 12,000 feet. ARLISS is an international event, where Japanese participants far outnumber American.

Upon my arrival at UL Lafayette, I introduced the contest to students and secured funding to kickstart our entry into the contest. We first traveled to the contest in 2014 and have returned every year since. We will also be sending a team to the 2018 iteration of the contest, with funding support from LaSPACE.

The UL Lafayette Teams have competed in the Open Class competition in each year. Open class devices must fit inside a cylinder of 146mm in diameter and 240mm in length and must have a mass less than 1050 grams. After being launched and ejected from the rocket at about 12,000 feet, the devices must autonomously navigate to a predetermined target location, simulating landing a spacecraft on other planets. In order to win the contest, the device must stop within 100 meters of the target and be closer than other competitors. There is also a banquet, during which each team presents their design and results to all other teams.

The 2014 team, the first-ever from UL Lafayette to attend the contest, was funded by the Louisiana Space Consortium (LaSPACE). They competed in ARLISS as part of their senior design project. The contest is held in September each year, so the team had chance to revise their design as part of their senior design process, a unique opportunity for most senior design projects. Some pictures from the 2014 contest can be found at https://flic.kr/s/aHsk2LRZYC.

In 2015, another senior design team completed the initial design during the spring semester. Then, a team of students from my research lab refined the design and completed construction and testing leading up to the contest. More pictures from the 2015 contest can be seen at https://flic.kr/s/aHsk6Xt1hc.

The 2015 team launched twice and never reached the target. However, there was not a single team among the 25+ present that did; this is a difficult project. The 2015 rover design can be seen during testing following the second launch in the video below. More video including the drive through the desert to the launch site and chase video following the launch can be found at the UL Lafayette ARLISS vimeo channel.

The builds for the 2016 and 2017 ARLISS contests followed a similar pattern to 2015. A senior design team completed the initial design during the spring semester. Then, a team of students from my research lab (including two students from the original senior design team) refined the design and completed construction and testing leading up to the contest. Some pictures from the 2016 contest can be seen at https://flic.kr/s/aHskC3FrAj and some from the 2017 contest at https://flic.kr/s/aHskQREGFS.

I was recently awarded another LaSPACE grant to fund travel for a UL Lafayette ARLISS team to the 2018 contest. This team is currently in the process of developing their design for the contest.

The Maritime RobotX Challenge is an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) contest among universities from around the world. The contest is hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), with corporate sponsorship from Northrup Grumman and, more-recently, NVIDIA. It began in 2014, when teams from Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States competed in Singapore’s Marina Bay.

For the contest, every team must use the same ASV, which must be purchased from Marine Advanced Research. Teams must then add propulsion systems, sensors, and communications systems and develop the computational algorithms to enable the ASV to:

• Demonstrate navigation and control, including avoiding obstacles
• Scan instructional codes on buoys and docks and respond accordingly
• Locate and mark a submerged acoustic pingers
• Automatically select docking location
• Follow all maritime navigation rules

The semi-final and final rounds require the ASV to perform a predetermined combination of tasks. The student-designed systems must be robust and adaptable to any combinations of tasks and weather conditions.

The 2016 contest was held in December in Oahu, Hawaii. For it, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and more-specifically my research group, was selected as one of the teams invited to compete. We took four undergraduate students to the contest and finished sixth.

In 2016, our entry into the contest was generously supported by a donation from Donald Mosing. Since the 2016 contest, I have gathered additional donations in support this project. These include two NVIDIA GPUs used for machine leanring applications and a VectorNAV VN-300 dual-antenna Inertial Navigation System (INS), which is a combination of a GPS and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) with some embedded processing.

The contest has served to rejuvenate ASV research within by research group, which began with a partnership with Swiftships Shipbuilders. Since the 2016 contest, a series of proposals have been submitted related to this work. One of these projects was initially accepted, but deteriorated in the contracting phase due to intellectual properties issues. Multiple others are still pending.

The Maritime RobotX Challenge is held every other year. So, we are hoping to attend this December and are currently in the fundraising phase to support our entry.