In collaboration with Booz Allen Hamilton, our E E 497/498 Entrepreneurial Design Capstone project addresses the challenge of taking precisely georeferenced photographs of the underwater domain. These photographs will be mapped onto existing bathymetric datasets (from sources like NASA and NOAA) to provide visual textures of static and dynamic underwater points of interest. Our team’s role is the design and implementation of the imaging system hardware, which will complement visualization software under development at Booz Allen Hamilton’s Seattle office. Our design extends the OpenROV 2.8 platform, a small open-source, tethered, remotely-operated vehicle (ROV), with emphasis on developing a successful prototype using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts at minimal cost. In total, our team has implemented (1) the extension of OpenROV into an underwater imaging platform, carrying a payload enabling hemispherical imaging below the ROV; (2) the design of a tethered surface buoy system, with access to Differential GPS data to act as a reference for geolocating the ROV; (3) the design of an ROV-mounted acoustic transmitter and buoy-mounted acoustic receiver array to determine underwater distance between the ROV and each array element; (4) the design of an efficient trilateration algorithm using nonlinear and linear least-squares optimization to accurately position the ROV relative to the buoy based on (3). Our research has significant implications for improving access to the underwater domain, including low-cost maritime sensing and deployment applications and military training and simulation applications.

Only a small portion of the market sells printers that are compatible with Google cloud print. In the case where a customer purchases a printer that is not compatible with Google cloud print, the printer can only be used through a wireless, wired, or USB connection. With the aim of allowing users to print from anywhere and at anytime, our project intends to design a low-cost and user friendly device that is capable of converting a regular printer into a cloud printer. The project is being developed on a small portable Linux machine (raspberry pi) using a 16GB SD card and a small Wi-Fi adapter. The raspberry pi is initially configured as an access point, enabling the user to connect wirelessly to the device. Once connected, the user then navigates to a web page hosted on the device accessing a user friendly interface to set up the printer. After the initial setup has been completed, the raspberry pi will then turn into a Wi-Fi client which allows itself to receive instructions through the Internet. The device will then interface with the printer through a USB cable. The users then can log in to their Google cloud print account on any device from any place at any time to print on the registered printer. This device, once developed, would provide a low cost and user friendly alternative to the existing expensive cloud-ready printers and allow users to take advantage of Google cloud print.