NAVSEA Robosub Competition (2015-2016)

The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) sponsors an annual competition for autonomous robotic submarines (Robosubs). The competition is hosted in San Diego, CA, and challenges engineering skills across multiple disciplines. The competition team brings together engineers from across the Palouse, but this page highlights the efforts of the University of Idaho Capstone Design team.

Problem Definition
The main goal for the year is to design and produce a working, autonomous submarine capable of completing specified goals and tasks while meeting club/competition requirements.

Background
Launched in 1997 and co-sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Robosub aimed to advance development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) by challenging new generations of engineers to perform realistic missions in an underwater environment. The competition is open to high school and college teams from around the world and is held each year at the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific's TRANSDEC Anechoic pool in San Diego, CA.

Design Objectives
The Autonomous Submarine must be able to complete numerous tasks designated by the competition.

These tasks include:  Going through a starting gate Navigating from task site to task site on a course using visual and audio cues Dropping markers at specified locations Accurately deploying torpedoes at targets Locate pinger and surface in appropriate area (typically an octagon)  How well each task is completed goes towards the overall team score for the competition. Other scoring can be attributed to subjective scoring.

These tasks include:  Team Website Technical merit (Journal)</li> Written Style (Journal)</li> Tech accomplishments</li> Craftsmanship</li> Team Uniform</li> Team Video</li> Discretionary Static Points</li> </ul>

Project Learning
Organized by Team 

Mechanical Engineering
 Sub Stand Submarine stand will be use to make out of pool repairs, as well as make for better presentation of ROBOSUB. The stand will rotate on it's central axis making it easy to access all major systems without complication. This project will be completed by first examining current device that perform similarly to this one. The new ROBOSUB will be made completely done from scratch and redesigned. Similar concept designs will be reused, but nothing from the original sub will be taken. </li>  Camera Waterproofing The cameras selected by the other teams will be mounted to the sub and waterproofed by the mechanical engineering team. They will need to be mounted such that they will perform as required for the competition, but do not interfere with other devices. Overall mission is to make the camera housing completely water proof, using a fish lens for versatility. Mounting will be designed accordingly to work with the case </li>  Additional Battery Tube Make an additional waterproof carrying tube for the sub’s battery which allows for hot swapping during testing. Only one battery will be used for competition, and design team will design a battery housing that holds the battery no matter the orientation. </li>  New Pneumatic Housing Only one of the systems currently will run on air. Design team is planning to use Pneumatics for the torpedo system. To do this we will need a new pneumatic housing to hold all of the required components containing eight slots instead of the previous 6. </li>  Buoyancy Confirm the new volume of the submarine to determine 0.5% of total mass and buoyancy. This is important because the competition rules states that “All vehicles must be buoyant by at least one half of one percent (0.5%) of their mass when they have been shut off through the kill switch.” </li>

Computer Science
 Sub Simulation Expansions will be made to the sub simulation software to allow it to interface with the sub AI, movement and vision software as a stand-in for the submarine. This will allow it to be used for easy testing of changes made to these systems. </li>