Kenichi Fujita, Yuya Hamamatsu and Hiroya Yatagai (The University of Tokyo)
University of Tokyo students challenged the SAUVC for the first time supported by OES Japan student program. Enjoy the story!
1. Introduction
Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge 2019[4] was held at Singapore Polytechnic on 8-11th March 2019. The event has been held annually since 2013, and this is the first time for a Japanese team to join this challenge.
This report provides an overview of the event including what we felt during the competition, especially about the difference between SAUVC and an underwater robot competition held in Japan, which we had attended.
2. Introduction of SAUVC
Figure 1. Top and side view of the main arena (SAUVC 2019) (https://sauvc.org/rulebook/).
SAUVC has three rounds: video audition, qualification round, and final round.
In the video audition, teams have to upload a short video to show their AUV actually works. This year, this audition was conducted around December 2018. 61 teams registered, and 40 teams, including our team, passed this round.
The next round is the qualification round. In this round, every team tries to make their AUV pass the gate 10m apart. The teams are ranked by the time to pass the gate.
Top 15 teams qualify for the final stage.
The final round has the following 5 tasks (Fig. 1):
(1) Navigation (10pt)
(2) Target acquisition (50pt)
(3) Target reacquisition (60pt)
(4) Localisation (40pt)
(5) Other bonuses (Time, size, weight) (52pt)
(1) Navigation
The AUV passes through the 1.5 m height gate (the color of the left pole is red and the other pole is green). The AUV has to complete this task before proceeding to other tasks.
(2) Target Acquisition
Four drums are installed at the bottom of the pool. One is blue and the others are red (one red drum has a pinger inside). Dropping a ball in the blue drum gives 30pt, in the red drum with pinger gives 50pt, and in any other red drum gives 10pt.
(3) Target ReacquisitionAfter the task of Target Acquisition is completed, the AUV can try to pick up the ball in the drum. If the AUV reacquires the ball, the team gets the score.
(4) Localization
The AUV localizes a pole called “flare,” marked with a pinger, located somewhere in the main arena and bumps it to drop the golf ball on top of the flare.
3. Our Team
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We had joined the AUV competition held in Kobe, Japan, in May 2018 (OCEANS’18 / Techno-Ocean 2018 Kobe (OTO’18))[6]. The tasks are swimming through a gate, touching a buoy, coming close to a pinger, dropping a ball, and landing on a plate.
Our vehicle ‘Minty-Roll’[1] successfully completed 3 tasks, swimming through the gate, touching a buoy, and dropping a ball (Fig. 2).
Three teams from The University of Tokyo, Kyushu polytechnic college, and Kyushu Institute of Technology joined, and our team got the first prize.
In October 2018, we heard OES Japan Chapter plans to give a scholarship for student teams to join SAUVC. Therefore, we applied and were successfully accepted.
Figure 3. Our AUV approaching the buoy
(underwater robot competition at OTO’18).
To join SAUVC, we had to modify both hardware and software of the vehicle. In hardware, we added a kill-switch and changed the batteries. The size of the battery was too big to carry in airplanes, therefore we modified the AUV to use smaller batteries. In software, as we decided to focus on passing the gate and detecting the flare (because completing all the tasks seemed to be difficult for us), codes for the tasks were rewritten based on the previous program used for detecting a buoy at the competition in OTO’ 18 (Fig. 3).
4. Our Struggle in Singapore
(1) Preparation Day (Fig. 4)
The first day of SAUVC had short guidance and preparation for qualification and final round. After giving a short presentation on our AUV to the judges, we moved to the pool and checked our AUV. We were worried that some parts could be broken during transportation, although it looked like no problem. Through the number of trials, we found the problem that one of four thrusters did not work well and the AUV could not go straight, once in ten times. We tried to detect the cause, but we could not.
(2) Qualification Round (Figs. 5, 6)
Our time slot was in the early morning. In our first and second trial, one thruster did not work well and our AUV swam to a different direction. The third trial was the most regrettable. Thrusters had no problem and our AUV swam straight to the gate. However, our AUV was slower than we expected. The AUV was programmed to move forward for 100 seconds. The AUV could not reach the gate before the AUV’s thrusters stopped. If we programmed to move for a longer time, the AUV would have passed the gate. The fourth trial was the same as the first and the second. Finally, the AUV could not pass through the gate, and we could not go to the final stage. Even if our AUV passed the gate, we would not be one of the top 15 teams, considering the time.
5. Differences Between the Two Events
We joined competitions both in Japan and in Singapore. We noticed there are some differences between the two competitions. In this section, the differences are discussed in the context of AUV, team, rule, and atmosphere.
(1) AUV
One of the biggest differences is the AUV’s size and speed. The AUVs in SAUVC were smaller and faster compared with those found in OTO’ 18. The size of our AUV is 0.67 m (height) × 0.40 m (width) × 0.46 m (length). This was the smallest in OTO’ 18, but this is one of the biggest in SAUVC. The weight is also the same. Ours is 15 kg, but I heard the weight of many other AUVs in SAUVC is around 5 kg. One of the reasons seems to be that the AUVs have to move as fast as possible in SAUVC to pass the qualification round. More than half of the vehicles looked to use thrusters from Blue Robotics (T100 or T200) [2]. Because the thrusters are the same, smaller and lighter body is beneficial for gaining speed.
Another difference is the variety of the shape (Fig. 7 Left). The box-shaped AUV, from Far Eastern Federal University, is the champion of SAUVC 2019. The distinctive design attracted the attention of many participants. It is designed to be able to efficiently accomplish the tasks of the final round using sensors, such as a hydrophone and a camera, without sacrificing mobility. The center of gravity is placed to be lower for higher stability in water. This vehicle passed the qualification round at a relatively higher rank, and it also accomplished some tasks in the final round.
Another interesting vehicle is a UFO-like cylindrical AUV (Fig.7 Right) from National University of Singapore (NUS). The most distinctive structure is the heave thruster placed at the center of the cylinder. They also used a stereo camera for object detection and navigation. Though we heard the system did not work well, if it works it would bring great advantages for accomplishing tasks.
Our AUV was made aiming for robustness enough for the shallow sea. This is beneficial for winning Japanese competition and for research.
(2) Team
There was a big difference in the number of teams and team members. In OTO’ 18, there were only 3 teams (10, including freestyle category), but SAUVC had around 40 teams. Some participants in SAUVC were surprised to hear Japanese AUV competition only had 3 teams. Some teams in SAUVC had more than 10 members and averaged 5 members. Our team has only 3 members, which is almost average in OTO’ 18. We were asked many times about how to build and operate the AUV with such a small team. Our answer was “we do everything.”
We found almost all the other teams in SAUVC are club teams. For example, Bumblebee, the team from NUS, is a robotics club participating in international competitions such as Robosub [3] and Robot X [4] besides SAUVC. In OTO18, two of the three teams consisted of graduate students. Many Japanese universities have club teams for robotics competitions, but their main focus is flying a robot like a drone or robots working on the ground.
(3) Rule
The recommended way of localization is different. In OTO’18, the recommended method for localization is line tracing. On the other hand, the main arena in SAUVC has no line to follow. Therefore, the main localization method was pinger and object detection.
Time to pass the task, the weight of the AUV are not important in Japanese competition. The weight is measured just to check that the vehicle is not heavier than a certain threshold. Therefore, we did not consider the speed to be important. We thought that we can go to the final round if the AUV passed the gate. This was not true. We were required to pass the gate much faster in the qualification round. Although we planned to use a vision-based gate detection algorithm, some of the teams that passed the qualification round seemed not to use any visual feedback. Their AUVs seemed just to go straight using PID control based on gyro or compass.
(4) Atmosphere
Underwater scenes were displayed in real time by underwater cameras in SAUVC (Fig. 8). This was very effective, as it is often difficult to understand what is happening underwater because the underwater environment is not clearly seen from outside. In Japan, the chairperson tried to verbally explain the situation, but sometimes it is difficult.
We had a lot of chances to communicate with other teams in both events. We were able to move around the venue and ask questions about other AUVs. All the teams gathered at the end of the competition. That also helped our communication.
Almost all the teams in SAUVC had some SNS accounts. As the accounts have many followers, they are a good platform for advertisement. For some teams having sponsor companies, advertisement is especially important. SAUVC offered SNS award for the team which earned the highest number of “likes” during the event. Surprisingly, the winner earned 46,805 likes in 3 days. Japanese AUV community is not so big. SNS seems to be a good way to attract young people who are interested in underwater robots.
6. Conclusions
We learned a lot from SAUVC 2019, although we could not pass the qualification round. This is the first time for a Japanese team to join the event. There were some differences between Japanese competitions and SAUVC. We hope that more teams from Japan will join future SAUVC events. Also, we hope more people, especially more students, join the world of underwater robotics.
Acknowledgments
This project was supported by Youngster Robocon Support Program 2018 offered by IEEE/ OES Japan chapter. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the organization for strong support.
References
[1] H. Horimoto, T. Nishimura, T. Matsuda, AUV “Minty Roll” and results of “Underwater Robot Convention 2017 in JAMSTEC”, IEEE OES Beacon Newsletter, 6(4), 77–79 (2017.12)
[2] Blue Robotics—ROV and Marine Robotics Systems and Components, https://www.bluerobotics.com/ (accessed 2019-05-07)
[3] RoboSub | Robonation, https://www.robonation.org/competition/robosub (accessed 2019-05-07)
[4] Maritime Robotx Challenge | AUVSI Foundation | Hawaii Robotics Competition 2016, https://www.robotx.org/ (accessed 2019-05-07)
[5] Singapore AUV Challenge, https://sauvc.org/ (accessed 2019-05-07)
[6] Underwater Robots Competition, http://www.oceans18mtsieeekobe.org/underwater-robots-competition/ (accessed 2019-05-07)
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.