From Swimming Pools to Lake Tahoe: Student Engineers Put Their Robot to Work
When Peter Webster and Jason Pieck co-founded Cyclone RoboSub three years ago, they envisioned more than a student robotics team.
The mechanical engineering students at the University of California, Davis, wanted to build a community where students from across disciplines could tackle ambitious engineering challenges together and create technology with real-world impact.
Now, that vision for the club is taking shape both in competition and in the field.
Making Waves
Into the Deep
In July, Webster boarded the ocean exploration vessel E/V Nautilus to spend three weeks at sea around the Mariana Islands. As an engineering intern with the Ocean Exploration Trust, Webster will help pilot and maintain remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, to map and characterize this oceanic region, which is among the least studied in the world. In the fall, the recent alum will pursue his Ph.D. in ocean engineering at the University of Rhode Island. As a member of the Underwater Robotics and Imaging Lab, he will develop low-cost sending and robotics equipment for ocean monitoring in the Philippines. Read more about his experience in The Davis Enterprise and The Sacramento Bee.
As a student-led competition team, Cyclone RoboSub designs, builds and programs autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs. In July, the team traveled to Irvine to put their vehicle to the test against 58 university teams from around the world at the annual international RoboSub Competition.
On the first day of the competition, Manatee, the team’s AUV, successfully submerged and drove autonomously through an underwater gateway in a pool, qualifying the team for the semifinals. In the semifinal rounds, the AUV had to autonomously navigate an underwater course and perform an occasional special maneuver, such as a barrel roll.
Out of the 58 competing teams, Cyclone RoboSub ranked 13th overall and 13th in technical design documentation. The team also landed first place for the Mathworks Simulation Award for their use of Mathworks tools to build their controls and testing systems.
While the team didn’t qualify for the final round of competition this year, Webster says he is proud of his team’s performance. The Mathworks award was a particular feather in the team’s cap.
“Our primary goal going into the competition was to be one of the three teams to place for this award, and we were ecstatic to be at the top,” he said.
Beyond the Pool
While Cyclone RoboSub normally works with Manatee in pools, the team has recently ventured into using the AUV in real-world research scenarios. The club partnered with the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, or TERC, to deploy Manatee in Lake Tahoe.
When the AUV was launched from the back of a research vessel into Lake Tahoe’s clear blue water, Webster recalls a calm, anticipatory atmosphere.
“I think we were all just hoping nothing would go wrong,” he said. “During the deployment and afterward, we were all very proud and amazed that it had gone perfectly — the footage saved properly, the tether never snagged and we didn’t lose connection once.”
Manatee used a downward-facing camera to record algal growth in the lake's nearshore region. With the footage they collected, the team will provide high-spatial and temporal-resolution underwater video imagery, along with the water depth and GPS coordinates where it was recorded, to support TERC’s Integrated Nearshore Algal Monitoring Program.
Brandon Berry, a TERC staff research associate who leads the project, was impressed with what Cyclone RoboSub has built and is excited to see more of the AUV’s research capabilities.
“My goal is to continue working with the team to develop further applications for the AUV,” said Berry. “It is possible that one day, this AUV will be an essential piece of research equipment at Lake Tahoe.”
The deployment marked the deepest the vehicle had ever operated: 30 feet below the surface. For Webster, seeing the robot operate in an actual lake rather than a swimming pool was one of the most rewarding moments since co-founding the club.
“This proved to be a great demonstration of how underwater vehicles can be used instead of human divers and laid the groundwork for us to plan more environmental research collaborations,” Webster said.
Expanding the Mission
The team, which largely comprises engineers but is open to all majors, is always seeking new ways to incorporate the AUV into research. On their way down to the competition in Irvine, some members stopped at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Center’s yearly open house and met with marine technology and science experts for potential collaborations.
Next, the students are coordinating with Distinguished Professor John Stachowicz, Robert and Rosabel Osborne Chair in Evolution and Ecology and interim director of the Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute, to work with researchers at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory. They will deploy the AUV to collect water-quality data in the eelgrass beds in Bodega or Tomales Bays.
For Stachowicz, giving these eager students the opportunity to deploy their robot in a real-world research situation is a win-win.
“I am always excited to help out groups of highly motivated students who are pushing their boundaries,” he said. “Who knows? We may find out something that we weren’t able to know previously due to expanded mobile monitoring capabilities.”
Using a competition-built robot to support active scientific research is an exception to the norm.
“It is extremely rare for RoboSub teams to deploy their robots for real use cases in the field,” Webster said. “The fact that we've been able to do that successfully really demonstrates the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of UC Davis.”
Whether it’s debugging software, redesigning electronics or testing their vehicle at weekly pool sessions, the team has the space to continuously evolve and help club members build their skills around this emerging technology.
“We’re constantly exploring possibilities and always expanding the technical depth of our robot while finding new applications that challenge us beyond what’s required for the Cyclone RoboSub competition,” he said.
