Photo By Gary Ell | Kyle Verrinder from the Naval Surface Warfare, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) SeaGlide...... read more read more
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The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD) SeaGlide Team was featured on the Department of Defense (DOD) Innovators Spotlight Series webinar on July 20, 2021.
In February 2021, the SeaGlide Team, comprised of Kyle Verrinder, Adam Wechsler, Jeffrey Merlino, and Dr. Gregory Anderson, was named as the DOD Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Advocate of the Quarter in fiscal year 2020. This Office of the Deputy Director of Defense Research and Engineering for Research and Technology award recognizes exceptional personnel in the fields of Research and Development, as well as STEM. The DOD Innovators Spotlight Series provided an opportunity and avenue to introduce the SeaGlide program to the world.
“The Philly SeaGlide team is at the forefront of DoD STEM’s mission to inspire, cultivate, and develop exceptional STEM talent through a continuum of opportunities to enrich our current and future Department of Defense workforce poised to tackle evolving defense technological challenges. We need the next generation of STEM professionals to step up and the Philadelphia SeaGlide Team is leading the way,” said NSWCPD Commanding Officer Capt. Dana Simon.
The SeaGlide team, represented by Verrinder, Wechsler and Anderson was introduced by Dr. Jagadeesh Pamulapati, acting director for Research, Technology and Laboratories (RT&L) in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) at the Pentagon.
“The team is recognized as the STEM Advocate of the Quarter for the impact they had made at NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command), and the surrounding communities in Philadelphia and around the Nation. From October of 2019 to March of 2020, the team designed, created and implemented the world’s only SeaGlide Underwater Robotics competition, as part of a Greater Philadelphia SeaPerch and SeaGlide challenge,” said Pamulapati. “The SeaGlide program offers underrepresented students access to high quality STEM education and a hands-on experience opportunity. The team accomplished this project during after-hours work and weekends, truly indicative of their commitment to achieving success and making a difference in the STEM program at NSWC Philadelphia Division.”
Pamulapati continued: “Overall, the SeaGlide program reached approximately 115 middle school and high school students and 200 educators and community members. It spans thirteen schools and community organizations from five states. The students engaged were typically from under-represented communities in STEM fields. As a result of the Philly SeaGlide team success, the program will become another DOD STARBASE, Navy Program (DoD STARBASE is a premier educational program, sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Manpower and Reserve Affairs) and the team is working in collaboration with two additional warfare centers: NSWC Carderock Division and NSWC Panama City Division, with an intent to employ this program across the nation and bring the knowledge and skills to solve problems.”
Noting that the students participating in DOD STARBASE will have to gather and evaluate data to make decisions in STEM situations, Pamulapati also emphasized that “the team exemplifies what it means to help advance the Navy’s participative goal in STEM education and outreach in future generations ready to chart a course in the Nation’s success. The Philly SeaGlide team’s innovative leadership will benefit the Navy and our Nation for years to come.”
The team highlighted the fundamentals of the SeaGlide program during the hour-long webinar.
“SeaGlide is an autonomous, miniature underwater glider that moves by variable-buoyancy propulsion. A buoyancy engine takes in or expels water, causing it to dive or rise. At the same time it shifts its center of gravity, changing its pitch. In turn, the wings provide lift, and thus propulsion. The system is inspired by full scale underwater gliders, which require very little energy and can be fully or partially autonomous, allowing them to deploy for months at a time to collect valuable data about the world’s oceans,” Verrinder explained. “The SeaGlide STEM outreach program introduces the concept of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to high school students. This program is intended to provide high school teams with an opportunity to expand upon their STEM education.”
“The SeaGlide Challenge is the culmination of months of research, building and testing. It involves writing a white paper, giving a presentation, demonstrating the vehicle’s performance, and timed small-group competitions in circuitry and coding. The SeaGlide educational tool kit centers on a curriculum-designed program, teaching students about the basics of naval architecture, marine engineering, computer programming, electrical circuits and microcontrollers,” Wechsler added. “SeaGlide is an open platform that allows design modifications to incorporate sensor readings, increased maneuverability, and more. Incorporating modifications beyond what is required, along with research and testing, should be the goal of every team and is key to doing well in the competition.”
SeaGlide remains an important program because it builds upon students’ existing STEM experience and takes it to the next level of learning and critical thinking.
Verrinder explained: “The challenge overview has three phases. During the first phase, teachers and student representatives attend a two-day training session for building the SeaGlide and learn the Arduino coding. (Arduino is a computing platform company, as well as the name of a specific type of microcontroller and a programming language.) During the second phase, students build and test, modify and practice their SeaGlide vehicles, as well as the Arduino programming. The final phase is the competition which includes six sections: white paper, presentation, performance, circuitry and coding, a bug hunt and find the fix.”
According to Wechsler: “For many students it introduces them to circuitry and coding for the first time. For those students who are familiar with circuitry from SeaPerch, it’s a tremendous increase in complexity. We want to involve students in the engineering process, including research, design, and testing. Although the SeaGlide arrives as a kit, it is a very open-ended build, and students are encouraged to expand its capabilities beyond the basics. We want students to think outside the box, literally! The competition rewards students for the research and design of improvements even if they’re not implemented.”
“The objective of challenge has two tiers. Tier one is to design an autonomous or semi-autonomous underwater glider that can accurately travel in a straight line. Tier two is to design an underwater glider that can accurately navigate a path consisting of two 90-degree turns,” said Verrinder.
“The circuitry and coding aspect of the challenge is a 90-minute race where three-person teams compose and program multiple circuits using the SparkFun Inventor’s Kit. The kit contains five projects to allow students to develop their skills over the course of the year. Coding is done using the Arduino programming language on the SparkFun RedBoard (Arduino-compatible development platform that enables quick prototyping.),” Wechsler added. “It’s not enough to connect the components correctly. Students need to code the RedBoard to receive input from sensors and provide output to LEDs, motors, and/or displays. The culminating project is for students to build their very own autonomous robot (SeaGlide).”
Always seeking to find new ways to keep students engaged, the program continues to evolve and has added new challenges over the years.
“This year we’ve added two more: Find-the-Fix and Bug Hunt,” said Anderson. “The Find-the-Fix Design Challenge requires teams to act as In-Service Engineers to develop a detailed engineering solution and prototype concept to expand the capability of the SeaGlide vehicle to meet a need specified by the Navy. The Bug Hunt challenge focuses on the teams’ troubleshooting abilities, a critical skillset for engineering and programming. We start with a working circuit and code, deliberately introducing bugs. The students have to restore the expected function during a 90-minute competition with 65 bugs.”
Verrinder provided details on the future of SeaGlide.
“For SeaGlide 2022 and beyond, we plan to improve upon the competition using lessons learned from 2020 and 2021. We will incorporate the Find-the-Fix and Bug Hunt challenges into the official in-person event; find new ways of testing the team’s engineering design, circuitry, and coding skills; expand the SeaGlide Challenge to a National competition by developing STEM partnerships with other commands within NAVSEA, in addition to leveraging existing partnerships; create original instructional videos for both vehicle building and Arduino programming and circuit design; and improve guidance to help close the gap between schools that have coding, electronics, and manufacturing support, and those that do not,” he said.
NSWCPD employs approximately 2,700 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The NSWCPD team does the research and development, test and evaluation, acquisition support, and in-service and logistics engineering for the non-nuclear machinery, ship machinery systems, and related equipment and material for Navy surface ships and submarines. NSWCPD is also the lead organization providing cybersecurity for all ship systems.
| Date Taken: | 07.28.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 07.29.2021 13:11 |
| Story ID: | 402033 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 200 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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