DukEngineer 2017 Article
See our writeup in the 2017 DukEngineer magazine: DukEngineer17 Article
Fall 2016 Wrap-up
We began our year with Bot Battle as a way to introduce underclassmen to both members of the club and the robotics fundamentals we work with. Partnering with the Innovation Co-Lab, we prepared kits, held office hours, and led workshops covering topics from controls to Arduino basics. In the final tournament, each robot fought in rounds …
Bot Battle 2016
In 2016, we hosted the first Bot Battle competition designed to get students excited about autonomous vehicles and robotics. The competition took place from 9/24/16 to 10/2/16. Twelve teams came out and competed- each building an autonomous mobile robot with different strategies for staying alive and taking down rival bots- but there could only be one …
8/2/16 – Robosub 2016 Report
Robosub 2016 has come and gone already. It was a wild ride, and we couldn’t be happier with the way things turned out. Eleven team members flew out to San Diego from across the US, putting their internships and projects on hold for nine days to hack hard, test the bot, and compete at the TRANSDEC. Our team …
5/2/16 – More Tests
We have finally mounted the DVL, fresh back from Teledyne after receiving a tune-up. We are continuing to fine tune the controls in a series of recent pool tests. Next step, finishing up acoustics and testing the system on board.
4/18/16 – Full Integration Testing
Last friday we executed our first fully-integrated test. This involved carefully sealings all the pressure hulls, loading up the golf cart with the robot, the support frame, the ethernet reel, buckets of supplies, laptops, and four people. It took us two trips to actually get everything. I think we can actually reduce it to one in the future. In the …
4/8/16 – E-Social Robot Unveiling
This Friday, we hosted Pratt’s E-Social. This is basically a free-beer-and-pizza that our school helps sponsor every Friday for engineering students. We used it as an opportunity to unveil our new robot for the first time to the community. Reception was positive! Next time: better demo in a swimming pool?
4/7/16 – Potting Moulds
3/30/16 – Robotics Gets a Non-autonomous Vehicle!
3/22/16 – Frame Assembly
The sub is coming together! We have mounted the horizontal thrusters and attached the pressure hulls to the frame. Mechanical is now working on attaching the hull connectors. We aim to do our first swim test next week and begin tuning our PID controllers.