Provided/Cornell AUV team

Cornell's 2012 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is lighter and stronger than last year's,with better vision. It carried out a complex series of tasks on its own to win the annual prize for the fourth time for Cornell.

Provided

It takes a village to build a sub. Forty students worked 10 months to complete the project.

Cornell's Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV) team has scored again, taking first place in the 15th International RoboSub Competition July 17-22 in San Diego. The competition, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, requires an underwater vehicle to carry out a complex series of tasks entirely under its own internal control, without human intervention. Thirty teams entered, including teams from two high schools and nine foreign countries.

Cornell took first place in the competition in 2003, 2009 and 2010 and took second place in 2011. The teams have also placed first in technical design for 10 consecutive years. As this year's overall winner, the Cornell team brought home a check for $8,000, and another $500 for first place in technical judging. They also received a third-generation Intel processor and motherboard, a nail (for "Cor-nailed-it," a joke by the organizers) and a set of mini Lego men. (Lego figures were used as part of the promotion for the event.)

A cross-disciplinary team of 40 students spent 10 months designing and building this year's vehicle. They improved on previous years' designs with a smaller, lighter but stronger hull and new vision algorithms. In honor of making the vehicle lighter, the team whimsically named it "Killick," which refers to a very heavy anchor. Tom Jackson '12 was team leader.

The competition required the vehicle to first strike two out of three buoys, choosing by color; navigate through a box made of PVC pipe; drop markers into two of a row of four bins, choosing by shape; fire torpedoes through two small holes; reach through a cutout and pick up two small cylinders; and finally locate an acoustic pinger in order to surface within a 9-foot ring and pick up and release an object there. Guided by onboard video cameras, a depth sensor and passive hydrophones, the Cornell vehicle finished in a little over 14 minutes, one of only a handful of entries that completed the entire course.

"Everyone was very excited and proud to see all of our hard work culminate in a win," said Katie Risvold '14, leader of the business and public relations subteam. "We had alumni and team members following us online on Twitter and texting us throughout the competition."

During the school year, the CUAUV team helped to educate Ithaca young people about robotics, working with Boy and Girl Scout troops, the Sciencenter and the Cayuga Lake Floating Classroom, which seeks to educate the community about the ecology of Cayuga Lake. The team's AUV cameras send live feeds to monitors on the Floating Classroom boat to show passengers the lake bottom and plant life. Previously the team helped to survey the growth of aquatic plants using the camera system and temperature sensors. "This is a great way for us to actually put our AUV to work and challenge ourselves to build to the rigors of a lake test," Risvold said.

Faculty advisers to the team are Graeme Bailey, professor of computer science; Bruce Land, senior research associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Alan Zehnder, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. Their role is mainly to help the team deal with the Cornell bureaucracy, Zehnder said. "It's a very student-organized and -run team," he said. "One hundred percent of the technical work is done by students." The students also take a professional approach to their business affairs, recruiting an array of industrial sponsors that contribute money and gifts-in-kind. The total cost of the finished vehicle, including donated materials and services, can run from $20,000 to $50,000, Zehnder said.

Returning team members will start designing next year's vehicle immediately in the fall and will be recruiting freshmen to join the team.