San Diego City Robotics is a group of students, professors and industry advisers with the shared goal of designing and building competitive entries for student robotics competitions. Our main focus is currently building an entry for the AUVSI and ONR’s 13th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition.
San Diego City Robotics’ third year participating in the AUVSI Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition could be viewed as ho hum due to to a 15th out of 30 team finish, but we saw the lightest vehicle (17lbs) in the competition do well in the pool with a small budget. The 2009 team redesigned the electronics/software platform from 2008 while staying within our modular design. Mechanically we made a few changes, some to improve and others to avoid leaking failure. There were significant RnD efforts that while they did not come to fruition on this years vehicle, they will surely pay dividends next year. While major portions of our team is leaving this year or taking diminshed roles, the new fresh blood should give SDCR a much needed boost for 2010.
Our project is open to all San Diego area students, professors and industry advisers. We are a formed club at San Diego City College called San Diego City Robotics Club. Being in the club is NOT a requirement for being involved in the project. Many of us have transferred to CSU or UC schools but still remain involved. Our project offers transfer students attending 2-year schools the opportunity to work on a major engineering project with the same continuity as students who go straight to a 4-year school. Currently about half of our membership have transferred.
Our project is only possible through the generosity of our sponsors. With their help, we were able to place better than MIT, Duke, U of Maryland, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State Univ., U of Colorado at Denver and other top engineering universities at last years competition. In order for us to remain competitive with teams that have budgets as high as $70,000, we are always searching for additional sponsors. If you’d like to find out more about how you or your company can become a sponsor, please visit our “Support Us” page.
