RoboBoat 2018

Trident Delft is a 6 person multidisciplinary student team from the Delft University of Technology. We are students from the faculties of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Industrial Design Engineering. Damen Shipyards, a Dutch shipbuilding company, approached the university’s robotics minor and asked us to build an autonomous boat that will be competing in the 11th edition of the Roboboat competition. During the minor our focus was mainly towards writing papers and conducting assignments. The minor finished on 18th of January and from that point on our focus and full attention went to the competition. This means that in just under 5 months we built the entire boat, wrote software, conducted testing, befriended new sponsors, arranged travel, and prepared for the competition. All from absolute scratch. We all were following our mandatory courses along side this project, meaning we spent most nights and weekends working on the Trident. In the end, our solutions and software might be used in the development of fully functional autonomous ships from Damen Shipyards.

Everyone in the team has worked incredibly hard in their spare time for the past 5 months and we can’t wait to see what the other teams have built. We are very excited to meet all the teams and the very friendly people at Roboboat this summer!

For the first time ever, the Robotics Association at Embry-Riddle has partnered with the Daytona Beach Homeschoolers to make a joint entry in the 2018 Roboboat competition.

The past year has been a flurry of productivity, as the Embry-Riddle team has constructed an entirely new vehicle for the first time since 2014. This new platform is outfitted with the best sensing capabilities for a surface vehicle of this size. The vehicle will be operating an advanced software suite developed and implemented by the Daytona Beach Homeschoolers. The newly merged team is excited to see it hit the water alongside our competitors this June.

The Marine Robotics Club SeaTech Division of Florida Atlantic University is a small group of Graduate and post Graduate engineers in FAU’s Ocean Engineering program.  The research interests of the group revolve around the enhancement of unmanned vehicles, with specific topics including human robot interaction and shared control; non-linear controls; global and local path planning; characterization of acoustic signals; object identification and machine learning.  This year’s group is looking to apply their experience in unmanned systems to provide robust solutions to the challenges and to perform favorably. 

Georgia Tech Marine Robotics Group is a team of undergraduate and graduate students from the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) at Georgia Tech. We are developing autonomous vehicles and software to compete in RoboNation’s RoboBoat, RoboSub and RobotX competitions. We won first place at RoboBoat in 2016, and qualified for the semi-finals at RoboSub and RobotX the same year. These competitions are a great way to get students excited about robotics and marine engineering, and we’re always thrilled to go there. Our team motto is “Everything is broken”, as we never had one competition without a broken sensor or motor, so we are always prepared and we never quit!

We’re The Water Dogs, a community based Roboboat team in Oviedo, Florida. Our team is comprised of local high school and recently graduated students with a passion for STEM and robotics. They are members of a larger robotics program that allows them to become well rounded in all aspects of competition and many of them have competed in other challenges such as FIRST Tech Challenge or VEX Robotics. Our crew consists of Zach Irving, Nicholas Injo, Jared Reid, Edgar Madruga, Haven Carter, Sachin Shah, Asheya Naik, Katherine Guise, Neel Maity, and Aashni Patel. We are mentored by Mr. Don Harper, Mrs. Po Dickison, and Mrs. Jaynelle Miller. Our boat, Sir Docks-A-Lot, sets sail for the second year in a row with numerous design improvements and innovations. We are excited to meet new teams and see their boats this year. Last year we placed second overall and won the speed challenge, and hope to improve and learn as we compete this year.

Barunastra ITS, established in 2012, is the roboboat team of Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya. Our team research focuses on autonomous surface vehicle. Within the past six years, our team has achieved many achievements, such as achieving second runner-up and achieving Savitsky Award for Speed & Maneuverability in AUVSI 9th ROBOBOAT COMPETITION 2016, fourth place in AUVSI 10^th ROBOBOAT COMPETITION 2017, achieving first place in KKCTBN 2016, and many more. Our Team consists of 21 members from various majors. Team Barunastra ITS itself is made up of three divisions; mechanical division, electronics and programming division, and official division. The mechanical division are responsible for everything that has to do with the ship design, construction, and outfitting. The electronics and programming division are the ones who do the programming and electronics configuration. The official division are the ones responsible for other nontechnical activities such as administration, branding, and sponsorship.

We are a newly founded robotics team based in Seattle. While all of us have previously belonged to other robotics teams, we thought that the Roboboat competition sounded challenging and exciting, so we decided to start our own team. Now, we are a small, but mighty, team. Since this is our first year, we are not focused so much on competing, but on expanding and refining our knowledge of robotics and computer vision.

SRM ASV is a student research team based in SRM Institute of Science and Technology. The team consists of 11 undergraduate students from various disciplines of engineering. The team focuses on developing cutting edge technology to develop the future of Autonomous Surface Vehicles since its inception in 2013.. The team consists of four domains namely Coding and Computer Vision, Electronics, Mechanical and Corporate. Coding and Computer vision domain focuses on making various algorithms for a precise movement of the boat and navigating smoothly through it. Computer vision domain works on various algorithms to get the input from sensors such as Cameras and Laser scanners. The Electronics domain works on make low power efficient power supplies from batteries and also on the online monitoring and diagnostics systems for the boat. The mechanical domain works on building a highly streamline, robust and stable mechanical structure to run over the water and also safely house all the electronics and sensors onboard.  The corporate works hard on getting sponsors and the funds required for the competition facilitating a hurdle less progress in research. The team as a whole is destined to achieve great progress in the upcoming years.

VantTec is Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey Unmanned Autonomous Systems research and competition group. The team started on February 2017 in order to compete in the international competition RoboBoat. Since then, the team has participated in university’s internal expositions such as Conexión Tec, and on the international entrepreneurial congress INCmty, representing the School of Science and Engineering. Even though the team started with 10 members, this year we increased the number to around 30 members, including professors and new students excited to work on this kind of technology. We are a multidisciplinary team, including students on fields like Mechatronics, Mechanical Engineering, Digital Systems, and Computer Science. Our graduated members are still working on related areas, such as computer vision and software development. On the other hand, first members still studying are landing internships and developing the team’s technology along with newer members. The team’s technology consists on the development of computer vision algorithms with both OpenCV and machine learning tools, mechanical design and manufacture, mapping, path planning and control algorithms, and Android applications for the UAV control. We are currently only working on unmanned surface vehicles of our design and the commercial DJI Phantom IV, but we are looking forward to expand to other kind of vehicles such as ground vehicles and aerial vehicles of our own design.

Roboboat Universitas Diponegoro is a place to apply research and development in the robotic field based on the improvement of maritime technology globally with amassing potential collages in Universitas Diponegoro.

Roboboat UNDIP Team is divided into 3 divions with total of 25 members (16 eligible members, volunteers, alumnies and 2 lectures) Mainly mechanical, electrical, and official. The mechanical division mostly handle designing, production, and engines installations which will be used in competitions, such as: design and analysis, ship production, propultion, and machinery. The electrical division is responsible for programming and autonomous system appliance used in the competition. Namely: Image processing, automation, hardware, telemetry and software engine. The last one is the official division, it handles the needs related to human resources and outside links such as: website making, public relation, media creative, project manager, and sponsorship.

The Robotics Club at the University of Central Florida is a group of undergraduate and graduate students with a passion for robotics. It is the group’s desire to build advanced autonomous robots for competitions and research. We are entirely student run and our projects are based around hands on work within our lab. We are always looking for dedicated people to join in the advancement of this demanding field. The Robotics Club at UCF is a great place for both undergraduate and graduate students at the University level to learn, gain experience, find job opportunities, and have fun.

The club has decided, after a hiatus from the Roboboat competition, to once more advance our existing platform by adding new features and join in the competition again. The K.I.T.T. team is composed of members from the aerospace, electrical, and mechanical engineering fields, as well as computer engineering and computer science. The boat team joined forces with the quadcopter team to create a robot capable of accomplishing all the tasks at this years competition. This year we have upgraded sensor packages and the codebase, and added the autonomous aerial vehicle built completely from scratch.

IMARC is an official University of Iowa College of Engineering Student Organization. Our goal is to provide students with the tools necessary to get jobs in their respective industries. Our club consists of students of Mechanical, Computer, and Civil Engineering. We also have members of the Computer Science and Mathematics colleges. Our club consists of 3 teams: Hull & Propulsion, Hardware, and Software. The Hull & Propulsion team has the most members, a majority of them being mechanical engineers. They’re job is to design the hulls and propulsion units just as their name implies. The Hardware Team works with the electronics and the software team works on the coding. Unfortunately due to our club being new, this is our second year, we have few members on the hardware and software teams. Only 1 is on the hardware, while 3 are on the software.

UM::Autonomy is an award-winning undergraduate student project team from the University of Michigan.  Each year we build an autonomous boat to participate in the AUVSI Foundation Roboboat competition.  The boat is completely designed and programmed by students and must complete a wide range of challenges that are designed to test its autonomous abilities.

We aim to further the study of autonomous robotics at the University of Michigan by providing students with hands-on multidisciplinary design experience in artificial intelligence, image processing, navigation, naval architecture, and mechanical design. Each year we strive to push the physical and conceptual bounds of our autonomous vehicle.

The uOttawa RoboBoat team is a division of Ottabotics, the University of Ottawa’s robotics club. RoboBoat is one of three international competition teams operating under Ottabotics.

The team was formed in late 2016, shortly after Ottabotics was founded. As this would be the first time Ottabotics (or any University of Ottawa team) would compete in the RoboBoat competition, the vehicle had to be designed from the ground up. After months of research, reviewing previous teams’ journal papers, and simulations, a comprehensive vehicle started to take shape.

As work continued, the team started to gain momentum, drawing in more interested students and attention from faculty members .  Today, the uOttawa RoboBoat team is proud to be supported by over 35 active members split between three subteams, several professors and graduate students, and sponsors from all over North America.

The team is organized by discipline, with the three dominant fields being electrical, mechanical, and software.  The electrical team designed and built the electrical resource management systems and implemented many of the vehicles safety features.  The mechanical team was responsible for the conception and construction of the structural and moving parts of the vehicle.  The software team developed and implemented the architecture and autonomous logic responsible for the overall behaviour of the vehicle.

Each team worked in harmony with one another and the finished product is a vehicle that has been given special attention in all aspects of its design; from hydrodynamics right down to the smallest sensor.