MSU's Robosub, "Blue November"

Mission Overview

The MSU AUVSI Robosub is an autonomous underwater robot sponsored by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). The planning, development, and building process spans an entire year and comprises a capstone design project for the electrical and mechanical engineering students on the team. As a team, the goal of the project is to foster learning by employing multi-disciplinary engineering strategies to produce an autonomous machine. The electrical engineering aspect involves assembling and wiring a computer, power supply, microcontrollers, sensing, motors, etc., and developing control algoithms. The Robosub requires command software to be coded by MSU computer science students along with the electrical engineers. The mechanical engineers are concentrating on designing a water tight capsule with several constraints including ease of access, buoyancy, dissipation of heat, pneumatic systems, and all physical modeling of our design. This multidisciplinary team is constanly collaborating on this complicated system. The Robosub will be equipped with hardware and software to carry out tasks for the 2015 AUVSI completion in San Diego, CA.

Competition Missions

All to be completed under 15 minutes in any order in one run. More tasks completed = more points.

  • Follow lines between tasks

  • Interact with color-coded bouys

  • Maneuver around obstacles

  • Drop markers in color-coded bins

  • Fire torpedoes through holes

  • Identify and grab or drop color-coded objects

  • Find acoustic pingers and navigate to finish

About Us

The Team:

Electricals: Jared Carter, Sam Johnson, Will Winward, and Will Nordahl
Mechanicals: Jocelyn Thompson, Austin Root, Arrol Bryant, and Mathias Fochs

The Advisor:

Dr. Todd Kaiser

The Sponsor

NAVSEA