AUVT at Virginia Tech was founded in the spring semester of 2002 with a bunch of volunteers and the guidance of Dr. Craig Woolsey and Dr. Dan Stillwell as an aerospace and ocean engineering design team.
The team decided not to enter the competition that summer, since we were new, but instead spent a year and a half preparing for the following year's competition. "Spock's Nightmare" was born out of this, since it looked like something out of Star Trek and it was in fact, a 130 lb nightmare to lift. Many will remember this one as the "Journey to the Center of the Earth Submarine." The submersible was built for about $1000 and donations from various manufacturers. On its second attempt to qualify, it proceded to spring a leak, become unbalanced, and go straight to the bottom with full power. When the divers brought it back up, we dumped about a gallon of water out of it and the computer was amazingly... still running. We did win the most "Bang for the Buck" award, for making the cheapest sub that actually did something. The biggest lesson learned was in fact that VIA makes indestructable computers. Oh yeah, and bring fruit and ice cream on the last day, and you will have many many friends.
We drove back from San Diego a bit smarter, and with huge plans for the fall and spring semesters. The 2004 competiton year brought about a significant change: 6 mechanical engineering students were going to each earn 3 credit hours for their work, and several people were working on components as independent study credit. The senior mechanical engineers were responsible for the hull and propulsion components, with the rest of the team handling everything else. Everything was going great, then the month of June rolled around. The three people in Blacksburg for the summer looked around and all that they had working was a set of 4 motors, a drop mechanism, and a computer. And there was a big sort of for the computer. We needed a hull, and we needed it super fast. Three hull designs later, the old sewer pipe from the previous year was used, based on the success of it not falling apart. Also, there happened to be about 8 extra feet of it laying around the lab. Because of the hull changing shape so many times, this year the sub became known as "Proteus," or the shape changing God of the sea. A few weeks of "borrowing" various apartment complex pools followed, and we were off to San Diego, for better or worse. Devon and Jenny drove the entire way out nonstop (That's 40+ hours for you folks keeping the tally) and even arrived well rested enough to actually function and eat breakfast before falling into a deep slumber for a few hours. Then the work began. This year, Virginia Tech once again became notorious as being the only team for which a scoring symbol was created. We attained the achievement of going "Under the Gate, on the Surface" by being severely overpowered and actually LIFTING the PVC gate up out of the water, sliding under it, and dropping it back down. It made for a good joke and several picture opportunities. We did manage to catapult ourselves from dead last to middle of the pack with this achievement, as well as prove that you can turn bilge pumps into real propeller driven motors as long as you use an aircraft prop. And of course, there was the triumphant return of the ice cream and fruit. Once again, we made many friends. The big lessons this year were that locktite doesn't always... lock tight, that 50 lbs of epoxy can make anything waterproof if you try hard enough, and never let Jenny drive a motor pool van through Phoenix at rush hour. At least we had three people on the drive back.
The 2005 year started with a huge bang, and not in a bad way. Over 40 people showed up to the first meeting, and about 20 of them remained active on the team in some fashion. This was unheard of! This year has seen such improvements as a definite lack of PVC or sewer pipe, nicer home-built and sealed motors, and a small increase in funding and parts supplied. Once again 4 senior mechanical engineers joined the team for their senior design, with the motors being their only goal. They did an excellent job and produced 4 water tight motors for the team's use. The team finally got on board with the rest of the university and used the laser cutter in the archiecture department to cut acrylic components of the submarine. This year the submarine is known as "Sowerbii," which is the name of the only freshwater jellyfish. She's mostly clear and hard to spot underwater, like a jellyfish. Just wait til you see her in action in San Diego.