Students of the University of Rhode Island (URI) have developed a boat that won the first place in a robotic boat competition. The competition was held in Virginia from June 9 to 12, 2011.
A TEAM OF URI STUDENTS won first place for their robotic boat, which autonomously navigated an obstacle course in the 2011 International RoboBoat Competition
The university stated that the boat competition needed boats that were designed by students to navigate numerous buoys autonomously. It also mentioned that the boats were also required to retrieve a tennis ball from a dock, use water cannon to extinguish fire, identify the targets that were on fire, and turn off a waterfall.
Ocean engineering student from Saunderstown, Hayden Radke stated that although the other groups navigated the buoy channel in a better manner, nobody attempted to complete the other assignments. The URI students defeated teams from the Georgia Tech Savannah Robotics, the Diponegoro University in Indonesia, Stevens Institute, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Lab, and the University of Central Florida. The students won a total prize money of $6,000. The same team will take part in a robotic submarine competition that will be held in July 2011.
The boat design comprised a twin trolling motor propulsion system, an extendable arm with ball grabber, water cannon, precision GPS, infrared thermal sensor, scanning laser range finder, and a computer camera. It also comprised numerous computers and microcontrollers that were programmed by the university students.