Nose Cone Design

Without any modification to the standard glider, the front of the glider is simply the bottom of the provided bottle or a 3D printed nose cone for improved hydrodynamics. However, this is valuable, often unused, space that we took advantage of to integrate our sensors into. Inside of our nose cone was a gyroscope/ accelerometer module, temperature sensor, Raspberry Pi and camera, and downward facing LED for underwater illumination. 

By designing our own 3D printed nose cone, we were able to include acrylic windows and a specialized pocket for the temperature sensor. These allowed for our sensors to interface with the outside world. Additionally, by removing the bottom of the water bottle and extending the inside of the bot into our nose cone, we were able to maximize the usable space.

One constraint with our design is that it needed to be waterproof while still being easily detachable. With the cap side of the bottle being permanently sealed, the nose cone was our access point for replacing batteries, extracting data, performing maintenance, etc. We made this possible by printing threads for the nose cone and the base of the water bottle.

Temperature Sensing

SeaGlide challenges students to design technical upgrades to the glider, and one of our added features was an exterior temperature sensor. This temperature sensor was capable of measuring the ambient water temperature outside the glider. Data was saved to the onboard Arduino for later processing. 

Like the nose cone, waterproofness was a design constraint. This sensor needed to be external to the glider, yet the rest of the wiring and hardware was inside. We achieved this by epoxying the sensor and wiring in place so that the detection surface was exposed to the elements while completely sealing the wiring. 

Raspberry Pi Camera

Our glider also included an onboard Raspberry Pi camera setup that was capable of taking photos and videos underwater and saving to an SD card for later viewing.

An epoxied acrylic window was installed in the nose cone for the camera to point out. There was also a separate acrylic window with a bright LED to illuminate the glider's surroundings, improving the visual range of the camera.

The camera setup also contained basic object detection algorithms that could be expanded on for other purposes, such as identifying underwater life.

Tail/Rudder

Our custom automated rudder system consisted of a micro-servo housed in the tail with a 3D printed fin. This fin had a range of roughly ± 90°. Using our onboard accelerometer and gyroscope, we were able to integrate the motion data to determine the current angle of the glider relative to its launch angle. 

Then, we mapped this angle to the angle of the tail fin, allowing for autonomous correction in the yaw due to imbalances or currents in the water. This setup also had the potential to be expanded for more advanced courses where navigation in certain directions was needed.

White Paper

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BOCuy0bZ7UFmeQgWm7sCic7dNp7ZCZoD/view?usp=sharing