Indian national student AUV competition: A success story

National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, along with IEEE OES and OSIs, conducts a national-level competition for students pursuing engineering degree to visualize and design an autonomous underwater vehicle. The conceptual basis for Student Autonomous underwater Vehicle (SAVe) is a highly mobile autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to be built based on engineering principles. This innovative initiative was launched in 2011 and so far NIOT had received 17,473 website hits, 257 registrations were made and 127 teams had submitted their Preliminary Design Reports (PDR) and 60 teams made oral presentation of Conceptual Design Reports (CDR) to improve their presentation and handle question and answer skills; 28 teams participated in the final competition and demonstrated their working and engineered AUVs at swimming pool. Most of the teams used 4-5 thruster configurations to have 6 DOF controlled by mostly Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) interfaced with control unit (CPU) and powered by commercial LiPo battery packs. Till now, 3 teams had participated in International competition held at AUVSI foundation San Diego, USA and totally 8 prototypes of AUVs were developed by engineering students in India since year 2011. The aim of this competition was to involve young engineering students on the new frontiers of ocean technology and kindle their innovative thinking in this unexplored area of ocean environment and observation. The most common configuration of the student AUVs is that the linear dimensions of the AUVs are less than 1.5 m in length and weight is less than 35 kgs. The AUV design is a modular hydrodynamic hull structure and made up of acrylic material; mounted on Aluminium metallic frames. Many teams came up with modular thruster mounting frames which could help position the thrusters for good attitude control and this proved good stability of the vehicle against unwanted roll and pitch. All the teams were suggested to use maximum of 4 number of thrusters (for 6 degrees of freedom) to optimize the AUVs operation for considerable maneuverability with good energy efficiency and high endurance. Almost all the student AUVs get power supply from Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) batteries with either 18.5 V or 11.1 V DC input to provide supply for the 19.1 V DC Thrusters and 12 V Mother Board. One of the most common features of the teams was Arduino microcontroller for controlling the thrusters interfaced with CPU. CPU configurations and capabilities of the teams processor speed varied from 1.6GHz to 2.1GHzsupported by 1GB or 2GB RAM. In fact, almost all the teams learned to use good quality web cameras for the underwater vision and image processing by placing them in sealed chambers. All the AUVs used face O-rings for the hulls for good sealing effect as well as for faster assembly and disassembly. Water resistant connectors were used to connect the AUV to supportive systems. The competition received overwhelming response from different institutions for which IEEE has come forward to extend financial support. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) also has shown interest to provide support for the competition to improve the awareness as well as encourage students in the field of underwater technologies.