Team SONIA drove down to Boston to attend the Embedded System Conference. Kontron, designer, manufacturer and provider of our embedded computer, generously provided a spot in their booth for us to display our project.
For two days a continuous stream of people strolled by the exhibit asking question about the submarine and who we are. Most people were impressed by the vehicle and its capabilities. It was a great opportunity for us to share our project with Kontron and the public.
The team wishes to thank, once again, Kontron for their generosity. We would also like to thank the Kontron team that was there with us: Richard, Suzanne, Christine, Matt, Jack and the rest of the team. Their professionalism inspired us greatly.
On august 9th team SONIA competed at the AUVSI and ONR's 1st autonomous surface vehicle competition in San Diego. With its experience in autonomous navigation and several high end instruments, SONIA was a favorite among the 6 competing teams.
Not much time was spent on our surface vehicle in favor of our submarine. We doubled our efforts and stayed up many nights.
The boats had to make their way through an obstacle course autonomously. The courses consisted of 4 obstacles.
The vehicle had to:
- Go through a gate
- Travel through 6 pairs of red and green buoys.
- Shoot 3 lit targets (among 6 targets).
- Dock a u shaped platform and recover a Velcro covered doll.
On the eve of the final run our power supply units failed. We replaced the power supply units in a record time by less a powerful one and therefore we were forced to shut down our onboard hard drive disk. We placed 3rd overall. We are mostly proud of having two third positions using the same vehicle in two back to back competitions.
We are now assessing the strength and weaknesses of our 2008 vehicle and preparing for the upcoming year. Thanks to all of our sponsors for the invaluable support they provided us.
This year the SONIA team makes a bold move. We participate in the AUVSI and ONR's 1st International Autonomous Surface Vehicle Competition. Instead of building a completely new platform and wasting precious ressources we choose to transform our submarine into a boat. We added two enormous floats on each sides that provide plenty of buoyancy and a platform that gives us multiple anchoring points for the instrumentation. For this competition we needed to outfit our boat with two cameras, a watergun, a kill switch, a mission switch and a GPS. Most of these equipement had to be intergrated here in san diego, between the two competition we are participating in. This transformation took less than two days, which is an awesome feat.
Our team is already exhausted from the previous competition and we need to kick it up a notch to get everything ready in time. We work on a steady pace and our project is progressing well.
The SONIA team ranked 3rd at the 2008 AUVSI & ONR 11th international AUV competition. ETS has been in the top 3 for 6 years in a row! University of Maryland won this year competition. The complete result of the competition can be found on the AUVSI website.
The SONIA AUV/ASV team would also like to thank all of our partners for their support. Without you this third place would not have been possible.
Thank you!
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