The RoboBoat competition is an annual event where student teams design autonomous boats to traverse an aquatic obstacle course. We are improving upon a boat made by a previous senior design team, focusing on making the boat able to recognize the area around itself and navigate with no human interaction. In addition to naval based tasks, the boat launches, uses, and recovers an UAV. This UAV is used for reconnaissance and can perform various tasks with no intervention. The boat can see its surroundings with a webcam, and with the use of computer vision, interprets it. An open source python library is used to recognize objects. A LIDAR is used to determine the distance to objects from the boat. The boat uses an onboard computer to process data obtained from various sensors (GPS, LIDAR, and the camera). It makes decisions based on this data and sends control to 4 motors for the boat’s motion. The boat is also able to be controlled with a wireless XBOX remote in the case that boat needs to be recovered.
Mechanical - Team Leader
Nicholas Hussey, the team leader for the 2018 RoboBoat Team and is a senior at FAMU-FSU College of Engineering studying Mechanical Engineering specializing in dynamics and mechatronics. He spends his free time playing tabletop games, and enjoying time with his friends and family. He is looking towards pursuing a career in the field of robotics, and autonomous vehicles.
Mechanical - Lead Programmer
Nicholas Gibson, a senior Mechanical Engineering student at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering, serves as the Lead Programmer on the 2018 RoboBoat team. He has spent many hours and late nights with the boat to the extent that he has built such a close relationship to it that he considers it his son, named Roberto. When he is not working on the boat he spends his time on various pet projects such as setting his home to have autonomous mood lighting and setting up server applications. To relax, he enjoys spending time with friends playing DnD or billiards.
Mechanical - Aerospace Engineer
Alex is a senior Mechanical Engineering student at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. He has spent the past 2 years working as a teaching assistant for Materials Science and Mechanics and Materials 2. Outside of his coursework, Alex enjoys building and flying drones as well as tinkering with his 3D printer. He has accepted a job and will be working as a Mechanical/ Manufacturing Engineer after graduation.
Mechanical - Financial Advisor
Mark Carey is senior Mechanical Engineering student at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. Mark’s hometown is Naples, Florida. He serves as Secretary for on-campus, veterans organization Project RAWW and has worked with GMF Structural. Mark spends his free time playing golf and spending time with family and friends.
Due to the large number of overall systems in this project, it is important to keep track of all of the work that has been done, as well as when any future tasks need to be completed by. A tentative gantt chart, as seen below, has been created to keep the team on track.
