University of Rhode Island
Introducing URI's fourth autonomous surface vehicle team! This year we will compete to keep our title as Roboboat champions. The team consists of eight people who participate in various tasks to see that job gets done.
Top (left to right): Hayden Radke, Adam Arrighi, Kevin Hopkins, Ian Vaughn, Rob Freeland
Bottom (left to right): Richard Kollanda, Andrew Bird, Tom DeRensis
The king is dead. Long live the king! Hayden Radke has replaced last years heroic leader, Kevin Hopkins and has taken the throne as URI's new ASV team captain. Like our previous king, Hayden will be leading the 2012 team to victory. Hayden has been a crucial member of the team for three years and will exercise his background in systems engineering to program missions for the ASV (RamBoat). Hayden is a class of 2011 graduate of URI's Ocean Engineering program. He is currently extending his education by pursuing his Ocean Engineering masters at URI. Career interests include acoustics and ocean instrumentation.
Adam has been serving URI's ASV team for two years. His contributions to the ASV are centered around mission and navigation programming. Adam Arrighi is a 2012 graduate of URI. He has received his BS in Ocean Engineering and is looking to increase his knowledge by gaining experience in the field. Adam intends to begging his masters in the upcoming years. His career interests include acoustics and AUV design.
Kevin Hopkins is the king that lead last years team to victory. He has been on the team for two years and has focused his participation this year around the design and construction of mechanical components of the ASV. Kevin received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maine in 2008 and completed his MS in Ocean Engineering at URI this May. Kevin would like to drive his career towards autonomous vehicle design.
Ian Vaughn is a mad computer scientist who has helped programming members of the team tie all loose ends together. Ian graduated with his BS in Computer Science from Cornell in 2008 and just completed his MS in Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island in May of this year. In his present work Ian provides mapping support for the EV nautilus.
Rob Freeland is a new member of the team and has helped this year by finding a solution to the Poker Chip challenge. Rob has designed, constructed, and programmed an arduino based rover to locate and retrieve a Velcro covered hockey puck. He has also constructed a platform to deploy the rover. Rob is a Senior in Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island and will be graduating in 2013. After graduating, Rob would like to pursue a career in robotics.
Having been to four competitions, Rick Kollanda is the veteran member of our team. Rick represented URI as the team captain in the 2010 ASV competition. His contributions to the team include vision, image processing, mission programming. He received his BS in Ocean Engineering at the University of Rhode Island in 2010. In May of this year Rick completed his MS also in Ocean Engineering at URI. Rick's career interests include autonomous vehicle design and programming.
Andrew Bird is a major component of the vision system team. He has spent three years helping the team by writing algorithms for image processing. Andrew graduated from the University of Sunderland with a degree in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Engineering in 2008. In 2011, Andrew received his MS in Ocean Engineering from the University of Rhode Island. His career interests include oceanographic/meteorological model comparison and oceanographic tools.
Tom DeRensis is a visionary new member of the team. The 2012 competition will be his first year. His contributions include image processing and vision system development. He and Andrew Bird make up our vision team. Tom graduated from URI this May with a BS in Computer Engineering. Tom would like to focus his career around signal processing.
