All-female robotics team takes home first place at RoboSub with a Nortek DVL1000 on their vehicle
- Company & product news
Making history as an all-female robotics team
Desert WAVE (Women in Autonomous Vehicle Engineering) took home first place at the 27th International RoboSub Competition. The team, comprised of current students and recent graduates of Arizona State University, is based out of the Si Se Puede Foundation STEM Center. They competed against 40 other teams from eight countries to secure their first-place finish, and was the first all-women robotics team to win a world championship.
Teams in the RoboSub competition build underwater robots which are required to complete a series of tasks. These tasks include navigating to a gate, circumnavigating a buoy, shooting torpedoes through designated targets, dropping markers into a bin, and surfacing in the center of an 8-foot-diameter octagon.
Dragon and Baby Dragon: an efficient robot team
The Desert WAVE team was one of just a few teams in the competition to enter two robots working in tandem. Dragon handled the more complex tasks, while Baby Dragon completed the simpler ones.
“This strategy saved a significant amount of time and earned us bonus points for efficiency,” explains Paulina Garibay Jaquez, electrical lead for the Desert WAVE team. Garibay Jaquez has been on the team since 2018 (the year it was formed) and was responsible for setting up Dragon before each run.
Baby Dragon was also valuable for earning “style points” while Dragon completed the mandatory tasks.
“Style points are awarded when a robot performs a flip or roll,” explains Garibay Jaquez. “The most valuable style was a front flip, which Baby Dragon executed twice!”
Using a DVL1000 to navigate Dragon into position for different tasks
Dragon was equipped with a Nortek DVL1000 which accurately guided the robot to each task location.
“This was particularly beneficial during the bin and torpedo tasks,” says Garibay Jaquez. “Dragon also leveraged the DVL’s precise measurements to navigate around the buoy and surface in the octagon.”
Once Dragon was successfully at the task location, the robot’s vision software took over to complete the task. In the case of the bin task, Dragon had to drop two steel balls into the red section of a half-red, half-blue bin, which it identified using its downward-facing camera. For the torpedo task, Dragon used the DVL to get into position, then aligned and shot two torpedoes through separate targets which it identified with its front-facing camera.
Problem-solving and task completion consistency
“The team faced many small challenges, but tackled each one with confidence and determination,” says Garibay Jaquez. “One major issue was a stutter in the movements of the AUV during operation.”
Garibay Jaquez explains that after checking for possible issues including loose wires, power management issues, and battery condition, the team identified a problem in the communication protocol between the main computer and off-board processors. They were able to resolve the issue with setting adjustments, significantly improving the AUV’s handling.
Overall, the team accomplished high-accuracy and high-consistency results in their efforts in the competition this year, leading to their high scores and first-place finish. They completed three nearly identical runs in the final round of this year’s competition.
The team won $6000 for their accomplishments and are looking forward to next year’s competition.
Check out a video of Dragon and Baby Dragon completing tasks at this year’s RoboSub at the link below.
