CREST RESEARCH
I joined the CREST research team at Olin College of Engineering during my sophomore year. CREST stands for Climate Robotics and Expeditionary Science Technology Group and mainly focuses on utilizing robotics and algorithms to conduct oceanic and earth sciences research.
AUtonomous Surface Vehicle
My first CREST project was to design an autonomous surface vehicle originally intended to test a machine vision based pathfinding algorithm, but evolved into creating a portable and modular test rig that could have sensor modules swapped in the field.
I began this project by conducting buoyancy calculations to determine the necessary vessel volume to carry our intended payload with sufficient factor of safety. After modeling the ASV according to the volume requirement, I conducted a center of mass versus center of buoyancy analysis to determine how the boat would sit in the water.
After finishing the full CAD assembly within SolidWorks I exported the hull models to Ansys Fluent to conduct a external flow simulation to determine how the water would flow around each hull and whether there were any points where the hydrodynamics could potentially negatively affect steering.
The next steps for this project are to begin fabrication and physical testing to validate my simulation work. I will update this page as I make more progress in the project.
