This grant will support experiment which will address a critical issue in undergraduate engineering education. The test project will be based on an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and will involve hardware and software design and development of ancillary systems necessary to carry out scientific and engineering surveys to obtain needed environmental data. The AUV's layered control approach, developed by Rodney Brooks at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, breaks the robot control problem into a set of interacting behaviors. This enables small student teams to work on a single behavior but also forces them to work collaboratively in order to integrate interaction among behaviors. This project will add a new dimension to Research Experiences for Undergraduates by providing experience in design, engineering, construction, and field testing.
