From June to August 2021, our group Autonomous Driving for Underwater Drones, our previous name, was a part of Lehigh’s Mountaintop Summer Experience. This summer experience program is run by Lehigh’s Creative Inquiry and supports student-driven interdisciplinary research than strives to have impact in the world. We had a team of 13 students chosen by our faculty mentor, Dr. Rosa Zheng, with some of us as full time fellows and others as part-time associates. Our members were located in multiple places, as some of us were in Bethlehem, Pa on campus while others were as far away as China. We were split up into 3 groups during this time: software, hardware and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). Our goal was to take a BlueROV2, the heavy configuration from Blue Robotics, which is a tethered, remote controlled underwater drone and make it autonomous. We aimed to be able to remove the tether and be able to drop the drone in a body of water and for it to automatically complete the objectives it was programmed for. During the operation of the drone we aimed to have no contact with it but when it would return we could download the information collected from its navigation. By August we were unable to make our drone completely autonomous, this was due to the limitations that came with using the BlueROV2’s hardware and software. Despite not reaching all of our goals, this was still a great learning experience and inspired us to join the RoboSub competition and create our own drone.
