Senior Design Projects - Summer 2022 Showcase

The constant need for technological updates to modernize and simplify everyday life demands innovation from engineers in many different areas. However, when diving into the topic of oceanography and underwater exploration, issues arise as ocean waters greatly hinder and obstruct our modern machinery. In the past few decades, submarines have been the leading choice in regard to underwater operations due to their ability to traverse through vast bodies of water for hours. However, major concerns reside within the human aspects of submarine operations; being so deep underwater is prone to many safety concerns. Furthermore, underwater communications is another great concern as water is a great attenuator of Electromagnetic waves, hindering wireless communication. Although methods such as acoustic and very low-frequency communication already exist, such means are not without their own drawbacks, such as limited range, transmission time, and multipath propagation. Additionally, underwater drones are also a recurring topic. However, with prices ranging up to a few thousand dollars, this option isn’t favored by many. Our project aims to offer an efficient and cost-effective solution, drawing inspiration from today's technology and innovating wherever need be in order to accomplish the highest ease of use.

Our Autonomous Underwater Vehicle would be an unmanned submarine drone, able to be deployed manually to the water and thus begin its search for missing persons. The system must also relay information from and back to the user through an application. Our submarine drone would relay information wirelessly above and underwater. In order to side-step the effect of attenuation of EM waves by water, underwater communication would be accomplished through a green-blue laser to and from our middle interceptor on the surface (our Man-in-the-Middle or “MiM”), then the MiM would either convert the information to radio frequency waves, or radio frequency to laser, depending on the state of the system, thus accomplishing two-way communication between our system and application.

The Proof of Concept Diagram shows how we are implementing our Level 2 Diagram in a more simplified manner. We simulate the MiM and Submarine with two Raspberry Pi 4's. We SSH into the first Raspberry Pi to send the signal to turn on the MiM Laser, which the second Raspberry Pi receives and runs the Detection Algorithm on the camera, simulating the LIDAR.​

The MiM is shown turning on the Laser used to establish an optical connection between itself and the Submarine below it.​ The Submarine is shown here receiving the laser signal from the MiM, activating the LDR circuit which begins the Detection Algorithm.​ The Detection Algorithm is shown detecting Williss as a person, simulating the scanning process the Submarine undertakes.​

A limitation of the setup we have now is that the wireless communication between the computer and the MiM is done via a phone's hotspot. Thus, the range of the antenna is limited to about 50 yards. However, we have designed this 2.4 GHz Patch Antenna to be operable beyond 100 yards, allowing us to reach a farther distance from the shoreline​

Another limitation of our current setup is that we can only send an always-on or always-off signal to the MiM's laser. To improve this, we have found the ONET110L Modulator IC which is capable of modulating in the 2-10 Gbps range, allowing us to modulate the laser with GPS and image/video signal via Wi-Fi.​

Lastly, we need the entire setup to be portable. Thus, we must add a portable power supply to both Raspberry Pis to allow them to float on top of the water. 

"The concept of electrochromism has been around for centuries, where a voltage is applied to a material that alters its optical properties. In this day in age, electrochromism is used in flexible electronic displays and smart glass. The project is based on modifying the design of an electrochromic thin solid film by adding a diffraction grating pattern to obtain different colorations. The design team’s product primarily consists of a design with a combination of layers, including WO3 (Tungsten Oxide), ITO (Indium Tin Oxide), and most importantly, a 1- dimensional diffraction grating pattern. The diffraction grating pattern is expected to have an effect on the electrochromic properties of the thin film."

When dealing with nuclear materials in a workplace there has to be certainty that the waste generated are properly collected and disposed. Workers disposing of these materials are putting themselves at a high health risk which is why our group took up this project on creating AVEU. AVEU is an autonomous vacuum for enriched uranium oxide. Using AVEU will lower health risks for workers in nuclear plants due to contaminated materials being vacuumed up and cleaned without the need for human interaction.

To approach this problem our team decided to compare prior projects, and autonomous vacuums available in the market, and we realized that the best materials for this project include Raspberry Pi 4, RPLidar, motors, and a Dyson vacuum. With this information, we utilized Gazebo to simulate the algorithms and materials for AVEU in terms of mobility, obstacle avoidance, and proficiency. We then different feasibility types in order to prepare for any problems that may arise in the future and determine if our product was feasible. After getting a feasibility score of 4.56 we moved on to determining how to make our product as efficient as possible by determining the operating environment in which AVEU will be working in and the parts that would help AVEU maneuver autonomously while still completing its task.

By the end of our research and development of AVEU we were able to create a wireless robot that could maneuver around it’s environment via a remote laptop and using a Lidar to scan objects and map out it’s surroundings. In the future, we plan to continue working on AVEU to add a working vacuum and autonomous movement that our group was close to completing.