STORY: Students in CREST Lab Develop Autonomous Vessel to Study Local Water Bodies
This summer, five Oliners working with Victoria Preston '16, assistant professor of engineering, designed, fabricated, assembled, and tested a small-scale autonomous surface vessel to enable more robust and efficient coastal research.
In her Climate Robotics and Expeditionary Science Technology (CREST) lab, Preston uses her expertise in scientific robotics to co-develop tools with students and scientists to explore and understand underwater environments.
Three student researchers from the Climate Robotics and Expeditionary Science Technology (CREST) Lab at Olin pose with the group's small-scale autonomous surface vessel.
Pictured (L to R): Irene Hong '28, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) major, Enzo Smajlaj ’28, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) major, and Kai-Xing Yue ’28, a mechanical engineering (MechE) major.
“At CREST, we do a lot of tracking and data science research on marine environments,” says Preston. “There is a need for high-resolution spatial and temporal data about near-shore and inland waters, so we wanted to create a robot that was capable of coastal monitoring and collecting data in a systematic, sustainable way from places people can’t easily get to.”
In the summer Coastal Evolution Monitoring and Robot Development project, students were presented with this overall challenge and told to take it and run. What they ended up with was a from-scratch, small-scale pontoon boat that fits in the trunk of a car and carries a payload of sensors out onto the water to collect data from water samples to sonar readings.
“One of the things I liked best about this project is that it was open-ended with the opportunity for lots of autonomy to come up with what we thought worked best,” says Kai-Xing Yue ’28, a mechanical engineering major. She also knew that having autonomous vehicle experience would be useful as she shapes a career exploring the unknown, potentially in space.
Four of the CREST Lab students - Kai-Xing Yue ’28, Anna Du '28, Enzo Smajlaj ’28, and Irene Hong '28, work on preparing the vessel during the early stage of the project.
“The project evolved over a lot of discussions and design iterations,” says Enzo Smajlaj ’28, an electrical and computer engineering major who spent much of his time wiring and integrating the electrical box and enclosure that allow the boat to move.
“We were originally going to restore and retrofit an existing vessel, but we decided to build something brand-new. It was labor intensive, but we all strengthened existing skills while also exploring new areas."
Enzo Smajlaj ’28, an electrical and computer engineering major, is seen wiring and integrating the electrical box and enclosure that'll allow the team's boat to move.
In addition to the actual building, students did water safety training, learned to kayak, and enjoyed some field work at local water bodies.
“Nearly none of the boat is off-the-shelf components,” says Preston. “One of their main goals was modularity in the design specifications, so everything is now plug and play. You can switch out the electronics system, motor, and sensors depending on your research goals.”
The boat is equipped with an RTK GPS system that uses satellites to identify its location while the rover is actively surveying. It has two echolocators—one in the front so it doesn’t hit anything, and one on the bottom to take depth measurements.
Three CREST Lab researchers pose with the autonomous surface vessel while wading in shallow water.
Pictured (L to R): Enzo Smajlaj ’28, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) major, Kai-Xing Yue ’28, mechanical engineering (MechE) major, and Irene Hong '28, electrical and computer engineering (ECE) major.
“Nearly none of the boat is off-the-shelf components,” says Preston. “One of their main goals was modularity in the design specifications, so everything is now plug and play. You can switch out the electronics system, motor, and sensors depending on your research goals.”
“Our minimum viable product was to get the boat outfitted with the echolocation sensors and get it moving by the end of the summer—which we achieved!” says Yue. She will continue working on the boat with Preston and CREST into the fall, refining the GPS system and installing a solar-powered base station on the roof of a building on Olin’s campus.
Now that the boat is up and running, Preston and her students will visit local lakes in Needham and Wellesley to survey them. They’ll make maps of the physical topography of the lake bottoms with the echosounder, as well as maps of the water chemistry with the sensors, including pH, turbidity, and chlorophyll levels.
Members of the CREST Lab, including lab supervisor, Victoria Preston, assistant professor of engineering (second from left), enjoy a bite to eat.
“I wanted a small, easy-to-use vehicle because we want to build these maps many times over the course of year and track changes,” says Preston.
“Taking really high-res spatial and temporal pictures of changing environments is hard to do manually beyond the broad strokes of seasonal changes. But by using this autonomous research vessel, we can also begin to study what happens when it rains, how fast things fall to the bottom, and whether we can predict issues like algae blooms if we can identify the signs before they happen.”
