Peter Leng

Transcription

[music] The Ocean Engineering Experience, or OEX is part of a suite of programing we have at MIT Sea Grant designed to introduce students to engineering specifically ocean engineering. What the summer camp aims to do is immerse students for a week in an in depth experience that will take them from sort of knowing what engineering is, thinking they're interested to really understanding what engineering entails what an ocean engineer might do, what types of skills they need and how they're applied. So that they come away understanding "What is engineering? Do I want to do it?" [music] I'm Marina Dimitrov, and I'm here because I like robots and I like the ocean. So, Ocean Robotics! I'm Brian Gilligan Arizona Greene Peter Leng David Ricardo Mathew Shorter Ian Rolf Kelsey D'Souza Andrew Lin James Mackaman Stuart Collymore Marisa Kager Michalis Kalliris Connie Zhang Matthew Maxwell Nicholas Chin I love the ocean and engineering, so this sounded perfect! [music] I'm Sarah Brennan. Georgia Van De Zande Riva Kahn Hallock Brandy Wilbur You know who I am! [music] The first day really introduced the students to their engineering challenge. which was set in this real world scenario where there is a power plant up the river from MIT. And this power plant uses cool water from the river to cool their machinery. As a result, there's hot water that's dumped back into the river and this causes problems for the ecosystem. The students were working under the assumption for the week that they were part of this scenario where they each developed an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) company where they were asked by the power plant to build a vehicle that would temperature survey the river. The first task was for the student to really understand what they were doing. To gather background information on how they would solve the problem for the week. So after the students were introduced to the design cycle, which would be the framework for their investigation for the week, they needed to go see their test conditions. They needed to see the river where they were going to throw their vehicles in. We sent them out with a CTD, which measures conductivity, temperature, and depth so that they could get a feel for what the temperature looked like where it was important to survey, and what conditions existed there. "I think we should head back to Sea Grant, and then we can come back here after lunch" "So, let's go get lunch!" [music] After that, students were introduced to the marine biology aspect that they were going to need to deal with through a guest lunch lecture by Todd Callaghan from the Coastal Zone Management "...a lot of the wetlands, this is the late 1890's..." After getting more of this background on why temperature change is important and can be problematic in the river the students were introduced to hydrodynamics and hydrostatics and did lab experiments where they tested the thrusts of different propellors, and looked at different buoyant materials to start to determine what materials they wanted to use to build their vehicles and how those would affect how they move in the water. [music] Day Two introduced the students to more background on how to present their ideas and think about design. So in the morning we worked on engineering drawing and computer aided design. So students began to learn how to draw different shapes and part drawings both on the computer and by hand so that they could represent their ideas. "So you can imagine with the ROV, you might want to draw a box that says, 'trust', and you might want to draw a box that says, 'frame'" In the afternoon the students had a lesson in the lab on electronics and began to experiment with ideas on what they wanted their vehicles to look like in preparation for the next day, Wednesday, the design review. [music] So Wednesday started with a design review where each group was asked to stand up and present to each other and the staff what their ideas were, why they made certain design decisions, what their thinking was, and what they thought was going to work. We then shared ideas and students all got feedback on things they maybe missed, or things that were going to work out really well and we were able to tweak their designs and begin building. Wednesday we were half way through the week and the students have gone from ramping up to being invested in the project and are at the point where they want to stay in the lab all the time. And we sort of have to kick them out and say, "When you're grad students you can live in the basement all day, but now you've gotta go to the aquarium"! To sort of gain a bigger perspective on what's happening. It's at the point of the week when they start to get very focused on tiny things and they stop seeing the whole picture. And the whole picture is that ocean engineering is a tool to explore the ocean, to look at changes in the ocean. And so we have to look outside our box of, "I'm saudering", to, "This is the whole goal of our project". [music] Thursday introduced the second half of the project, which was the sensor suite. So the students needed to build a vehicle as a platform, but they were interested in looking at temperature in the river. So they needed to build a sensor suite also to look at temperature. So students learned to use a micro controller, connect temperature and pressure sensors to it. And then connect elements that would save data or record data. [music] The remainder of Thursday was building time. So beginning to design the sensor, while still finishing up plans and testing on the vehicle. "It works!" Friday marked the final day before the test and final presentation at the museum for the students. The goal for the end of day was to finish up their design. So we began the morning with another design review of the sensor portion, where students presented their ideas and received critiques on things that they needed to continue to think about and afterwards they continued to finish up their vehicles and build the sensor suites. "Yeah, no food's allowed in the lab, it's really sad!" So the students received a lunch lecture at Sea Grant by Professor Chyssostomidis about his journey through ocean engineering; how he decided that the subject was of interest to him and what sort of things the students could expect within the field of ocean engineering. "Almost every day I learn something new, and it's a lot of fun being an ocean engineer" so let me tell you the things you might want to keep in mind and what problems you can address." After the lab tour and talk at Sea Grant, the students returned to the lab and we worked well into the night So the end of Friday is this process of tweaking all these things that we didn't see before leading up until Saturday morning, which was a continuation of finishing up the vehicles and preparing for the final presentation. At about 2 o'clock Saturday, all the students were ready to bring their vehicles out and we went and did a field test along the river. Each student had a different sampling plan and tested their vehicles in different places "Yeah! It's a shark! It's a laser shark!" "This is almost the end of our tether" "It works!" "Yay! It works!" "And the sensors are all intact" Afterwards we headed back up to the MIT Museum for our public presentation. "I am delighted to welcome the OEX, hosted by MIT Sea Grant So by the end, the students all had a great sense of accomplishment but also this sense of wanting to continue to tweak things. I kept hearing, "Five more minutes! I need five more minutes in the lab!" I keep hearing lots of plans to well, "I'm starting a robotics club at my school. Can you help me do that?' Or students now want to continue learning more about engineering because they have a better feel for what it actually is. The number one feedback I get from the students is that they didn't really understand what engineering meant but they thought they were interested. Now they understand what engineering is it's harder than they thought but they're really interested! [music]