Fall 2023 - Machine Intelligence Lab - SubjuGator AUV - GitHub

Challenge

During the Fall 2023 semester, my primary project at the University of Florida’s Machine Intelligence Lab (MIL) was to create an underwater robotic gripper.

The gripper needed to be created for the RobotSub 2024 Underwater Robotics Challenge, where our labs’ large Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), SubjuGator, would compete against colleges from around the world to autonomously complete a series of challenges.

For the gripper task, the robot would have to autonomously position itself above a bin, then move the lid before dropping other items inside it. The gripper also needed to be capable of picking up complexly shaped coral objects.

Solution

My solution for this challenge was to create a simple servo actuated gripper with two counter-rotating jaws. The jaws were machined out of aluminum stock on a 2-axis waterjet, while the rest of the parts were 3D printed. The design features a clamp-based mount so that the position of the gripper could be easily changed with minimal downtime.

The gripper was standalone tested in a pool using an Arduino to control the servo, however due to integration challenges with software, the gripper was unable to be comprehensively tested at the RoboSub Challenge.

A full SolidWorks CAD of the ball launcher is available at my GitHub, and I would be happy to answer any questions about this project via email or LinkedIn.