Ocean Engineering Senior Design Final Review
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Group Four
Bio-Inspired Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASVs) often perform operations away from any dock, when needing to maintain position for a certain amount of time. In the presence of high winds and/or strong currents, the station keeping capability is time-limited due to the finite amount of energy stored in the batteries. Anchoring an ASV seems to be the logical approach to solve this issue. However, anchoring and retrieving an anchor is a challenging process for an autonomous device, both in terms of operations and in terms of instant power requirements. This is especially true when the station keeping must be accurate, which leads to three-point anchoring. Here, the students shall design and implement an ASV capable of deploying a single anchor in the presence of current, perform station keeping for a fixed amount of time and retrieve the anchor.
System Level Requirements:
1. The group shall design an underwater vehicle with an undulating fin propulsion. The unit shall be able to move forward and backward with a speed of at least half-body length per second undulating the fin and maintain a given depth between 0-3 [m] with an accuracy of 3 [cm].
2. Requirement 1 + the unit shall be able to detect and avoid collision against a wall.
3. Requirement 2 + the unit shall be able to perform station-keeping in presence of water flow with speed between 0-20 [cm/s].
Operating Requirements
- The vehicle should be carried by one person and with the capability to operate for at least two hours.
- The vehicle must fit in the test section of the wave/towing flume at the hydrodynamics lab at SeaTech (dimensions 4 [ft] x 4 [ft] x 60 [ft]).
Presentation & Forms
Click here to download group four's PowerPoint presentation
Click here for group four's evaluation form