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Congratulations to UF’s NaviGator AMS team, winner of the 2016 Maritime RobotX Challenge (www.RobotX.org) in Hawaii. See www.NaviGatorUF.org and www.twitter.com/NaviGatorUF for more info.

UF’s Team NaviGator AMS, winner of the 2016 Maritime RobotX Challenge in Oahu, Hawaii

RoboBoat 2017

Jan 13, 2017
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We are not planning to compete in 2017, but expect to be back in 2018.  
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UF recognized for outreach

Jul 14, 2015
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While we the boat did not perform as well as we had hoped, we did earn an award for the outreach the team conducted.  PropaGator has been displayed at museums, art galleries, and even First Robotic events with the intention of educating the public about robotics as well as inspiring future engineers.  In addition to that, team member Dan Frank’s outreach using Sea Perch kits with Citizen Potawatomi Nation and organizing a FLL and general stem outreach with Navajo Nation was recognized.
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Testing the new version of Solid Works

Jun 09, 2015
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Dan was having fun this morning with the new version of Solid Works.  He thought that everyone would appreciate it.  Reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean.
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First day in Lake Alice

Jun 04, 2015
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Yesterday we spent about eight hours in the Lake dodging alligators and testing our boat’s controller software.  Zach has been tirelessly working on the thruster mapper, PD controller, and low level path planner.  Every day we are in the water, the boat shows significant improvement in controllability.  Four of the hours were spent on mobility while the other four were spent on recording LIDAR and camera data.  We’re really lucky to have access to Lake Alice on campus.  The size and
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Back in the Pool

May 20, 2015
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PropaGator 2 is back in the water.  Today we tested the low level path planner.  The boat is able to stay within a small area, but oscillates and struggles to maintain it’s heading while stationary.  Much of the oscillations were due to controller gains that needed to be tuned.  In addition to the controller, we tested out our passive sonar with a ultrasonic pinger.  The sonar works well when the boat is stationary.  We also recorded a handful of videos of the parking symbols for vision al
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Atlanta Aquarium

May 09, 2015
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“The 2015 AUVSI conference at the Atlanta Aquarium was sweet!”  -Matt (Look at what he is eating)
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AUVSI Conference 2015!!!!

May 08, 2015
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The AUVSI Foundation allowed us to show off our boat and sub at the 2015 AUVSI conference held in Atlanta!  PropaGator 2 and SubjuGator 7 attracted quite a crowd every day.  The team was peppered with questions on how we controlled our vehicles, how we made our platforms, what types of batteries we used, and many more.  By the end of the 3 day event, most of us had lost our voices.  We’re looking forward to the 2016 conference. On the last day of the conference, Dan and I gave tours to loc
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Pond testing

May 02, 2015
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  PropaGator 2 can station hold with the new thruster mapper!!!! The team spent Saturday at the local pond testing the boat.  Our primary focus was on making the boat controllable and we succeeded (sort of).  After a few hours in the water, PropaGator was able to move in the desired directions and resist external disturbances (wind, rope pull) by using its thrusters.  However, the thruster mapper is still producing solutions that are not achievable by the boat (1000 newtons of thrust ect
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New thruster mapper

Apr 22, 2015
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We’re taking a different approach to controls this year.  After reading Fossen’s paper (recommended by Patrick Walters), Jacob applied a nonlinear controller to the boat’s azimuth drive.  The thruster mapper finds the optimal orientation of the thrusters and calculates the amount of thrust to move the boat along any vector. We took the boat to a local pool and began testing Jacob’s controller.  First we tested the remote control node (which worked well after an hour of te
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About Us

Winner of the 2013 RoboBoat competition, PropaGator is an autonomous surface vehicle designed and built by students at the Machine Intelligence Lab (MIL) at the University of Florida. This is the third year the University of Florida has participated in the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) Foundation’s surface vehicle competition. The PropaGator team is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering.

Formal weekly meetings are over for the summer. Interested students are welcome to stop by during normal working hours or whenever the door is open.

Recent Posts Widget

RoboBoat 2017
Jan 13, 2017
UF recognized for outreach
Jul 14, 2015
Testing the new version of Solid Works
Jun 09, 2015
First day in Lake Alice
Jun 04, 2015

AUVSI RoboBoat 2017

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