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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

UF Stakeholders Dinner

Nov 14, 2014
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The Engineering Department of the University of Florida held a stakeholders dinner to acknowledge supporting alumni.  We were proud to represent the departments of mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering with the display of our boat.  After the two hour dinner, we had a chance to talk to 40-50 donors.
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Beat Missouri!

Oct 18, 2014
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Today, a group of team members from the Machine Intelligence Lab headed down to our campus lawn for the engineering tail gate.  We set up several tents and put our lab projects on display.  PropaGator and our sister team SubjuGator answered questions and explained our projects to several hundred students and alumni.  The weather couldn’t have been better!            
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Harn Museum Night 2014 Boat Show

Oct 09, 2014
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We were invited again to show off the boat at the Harn Museum this year.  Positioned at the entrance of the museum, everyone who came to the event got a chance to see the boat.  The team was asked questioned that ranged from “Is this a weapon?” to “What algorithm do you use to detect the buoys?”.  It was fun to talk with the public (~500 visitors) about our lab and the projects have built.  Hopefully we inspired some young engineers!
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PropaGator/SubjuGator Information Meeting Fall 2014

Sep 01, 2014
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Interested in joining the Machine Intelligence Lab and working on our projects?  We’re having a meeting on Friday, September 5th, at 6:15 PM in NPB 1001.  It’s open to any interested students.  The full flyer can be found here. “Join us for an information session on the University of Florida SubjuGator and PropaGator projects. We will discuss the results of last year’s competitions and explore the current problems we are interested in solving over the next year.  In addition, t
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Making Space in the Lab

Aug 24, 2014
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After the dust settled from the summer competitions, we looked around our lab and realized that our lab was a mess.  All of the tables were either covered in parts or had a marine robot on top.  During the cleaning process, several team members decided that it would be a good idea to suspend the boats from the ceiling.  We looked up plans on building a pulley hoist system and applied them to our lab projects.  Three weeks later, our boat mold, prototype, and two hulls have been suspended from th
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More than meets the eye

Aug 03, 2014
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We had a PropaGator fan give her interpretation of the boat as a superhero (or supervillain).   Should PropaGator actually be a transformer, in the transformed mode, the boat would look like the following picture. Notice the LIDAR mounted on the head with the two hubless thrusters on the shoulders.  Also, it’s hard to miss the gator-skin hull design.  And PropaGator’s secret weapon?  The yellow buoy that the boat “ate” during the 2014 RoboBoat competition!  Thanks to Sydn
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An unexpected visitor

Jun 26, 2014
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Today, at Lake Alice, we had an unexpected visitor.  During the testing of our second hull (see video below), a baby alligator stopped by to say hello. The new hull is propelled by a student designed hubless propeller.  To turn the propeller, we are using a 1200 watt brushless motor.  Our second hull performed well with a top speed of 12.5 mph.  However, after running it full speed for 5 minutes, we experienced an electrical failure in the port thruster.  The failure caused us to place the boat
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Testing in the Florida Pool

Jun 10, 2014
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Today, we deployed the boat for the first time with its new paint job.  We painted the boat black to see how hot the the internals would become.  The outside temperature was aroun 95 F.  We found that the boat’s ambient temperature plateaued around 113F with the CPU at 145F.  While the boat was able to operate under the high temperature, we decided that it would be safer to open the top and allow the electronics to “breathe”. In addition to the temperature test, we tested our n
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The boat is in one piece!

Jun 02, 2014
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After hundreds of man hours, we have finally been able to begin assembling the boat.  Both halves were mated together with small strips of fiberglass.  Once the strips hardened, a fiberglass seam was rolled on the inside of the hull.  The seam held the two halves together and ensured that the water tight integrity of the boat was maintained.          
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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.

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Jun 04, 2015

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