Autonomous (i.e. self-driving) vehicles are set to become the great disrupter of our time. In this project, we will work with undergraduate Engineering and Marine Environmental Science students to design, build, and use small unmanned vessels. Students will be involved in all phases of production, including design, fabrication, assembly, algorithms and coding, and deployment. The vessels will be outfitted with probes to collect water quality data such as temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen. Marine Environmental Science students will deploy the vessels in the East River, adjacent to our campus. These students will then use the collected data to conduct research on East River water quality. Furthermore, we will provide an additional vessel to a partner maritime academy in the Bahamas, thus enabling their students to collect water quality data, without needing specialized knowledge of building unmanned vessels.

https://youtu.be/I8T9rVNtw7M?t=860