October 20, 2006 - Anyone who believes college students today
are lacking in initiative, creativity, or work ethic should take a
close look at the recent accomplishments of a team of students at the
Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS) in Montreal, Quebec. Over the
past three years, this team of 12 has been heads-down working on the
mechanical design, electrical system, and Java™ control and navigation
software for an AUV—a submarine—and preparing it for the International
Autonomous Underwater Competition sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in San Diego, California.
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SONIA Team
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For no college credits, no pay, and no guarantee of success, the ETS
team designed and built an AUV that could meet the complex and
demanding mission requirements of the competition. Detailed in an
18-page document, these requirements included the ability to
autonomously pass through a gate, detect a flashing light, find and
connect with a docking station, locate a pipe and drop material into a
bin—all underwater and with no communication with the team.
The submarine is called SONIA, which stands for Système d’Opérations Nautiques Intelligent et Autonome,
and is just over one meter long, with a dry weight of 20 kg and a
unique box-shaped design. It is equipped with sensors and two color
video cameras. Navigation data input is provided by a compass and two
gyroscopes as well as active and passive sonar arrays.
SONIA outperformed all but two of the 21 entries in the student
competition, securing a place for ETS on the podium for a fourth year
in a row. With an overall budget of just $15,000 U.S. (provided by ETS
and a variety of corporate sponsors), the ETS team scored higher than
teams with six-figure budgets. The competition was won by the
University of Florida, but the ETS team came out ahead of renowned
engineering schools such as MIT, Georgia Tech, and Virginia Tech.
Innovative Design, Expert Software Engineering
Two of the characteristics that set SONIA apart from competitors
were its innovative box-shaped design and the sophistication of its
core software systems.
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SONIA underwater
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“The traditional tube shape requires a lot of extra design work because
electronics boards are square,” said David Mercier, technical leader of
the ETS team. “The only disadvantage of the box shape is how it moves
through the water, and we overcame that by making the hull out of
machined aluminum and hand-polishing it for 25 hours to make it glide
through the water more easily.”
The ETS team’s expertise with Java software proved a decisive
advantage. Martin Morissette, software team leader of the SONIA team,
is currently entering his third year in software engineering, and
recently completed a six-month internship at Sun Labs, where he worked
on the “Squawk VM,”
a small J2ME™ virtual machine (VM) written almost entirely in Java. The
Squawk VM provides the ability to run wireless transducer applications
directly on the CPU without any underlying OS, saving overhead and
improving performance.
“I learned a great deal during my time with Sun Labs that was
extremely useful in the development of the navigation software for
SONIA,” said Morissette. “The fact is, Java is an excellent programming
language for robotics. All schools teach Java, so everyone on the
software team knows how to use it. It’s object-oriented; it’s portable
so it runs on Macs, PCs, Linux, whatever; it’s very efficient so we
don’t have to worry about memory management; and there are lots of APIs
available. And if you know how to write your applications properly, it
can be very fast.”
The ETS team used Java for mission control and SONIA’s control
systems, Java Management Extensions (JMX) for management, and a Java
3-D Simulator to simulate a broad range of mission scenarios. The team
is now investigating the possibilities of Real-time Java, introduced at this year’s JavaOne Conference, for AUV and other robotics applications.
Consensus Building and Peer Review
According to Mr. Mercier, teamwork was every bit as important as
technology in the ETS team’s success. “I can’t stress strongly enough
that our ability to work together was the key to our success in the
competition,” he said. “This is not about 12 individuals working on
separate tasks by themselves. Every step of the way, we worked as a
team and built consensus, so in the end everyone learned more. And
that’s what this is really all about.”
For example, each software change was subject to peer review.
All team members would receive an e-mail containing the previous
version of the software, the new version incorporating a proposed
change, and the rationale behind the change. Far from slowing the
process down, the peer review concept got more team members more
actively engaged, and ultimately resulted in far higher quality,
according to Mr. Mercier. These peer reviews also ease the integration
of new team members. Being a volunteer based project, volunteers come
and go on a regular basis.
At the same time, the team shared tips and tricks with peers at
other educational institutions. “This is more of a friendly rivalry
than a dog-eat-dog competition,” said Tennessee Carmel-Veilleux,
electrical team leader of the SONIA team. “We like to exchange
information with some of the other teams, keep in touch with them. Who
knows—we may all be working together some day.”
In recognition of the team’s willingness to work with other
teams, and for achievements at the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle
Competition, Felix Pageau, team captain, won the Andy Estabrook Award
for "initiative and vision in the unmanned underwater systems.” Given
for the first time to a student, the award was presented by the
Lindbergh Chapter, San Diego, CA, of the AUVSI. Andy Estabrook was a
pioneer in unmanned robotics and this award was created to honor his
accomplishments in the advance of unmanned systems technology.
What’s next for the ETS team? The team itself is growing
rapidly, thanks in part to the success at this year’s competition. The
team leaders now find themselves in management roles as the team’s
ranks have swollen to 34. “We’re going to compete again next year, and
we’re going to focus on making our software more stable, more reliable,
and faster,” said Mr. Morissette. In the mean time, the team leaders
will be presenting their work at a variety of conferences
worldwide—from Florida and Washington D.C. to Cologne, Germany.
And when will they get around to more traditional college
activities such as frat parties and beer runs? “Probably never,” said
Mr. Mercier. “We’re geeks. We’re doing what we love.”
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posted on 2006-12-01 20:57
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