Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) has announced the launch of its first Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) named Black Pearl. Created by MEC students and mentored by their professors, the Black Pearl is a self-propelled, unmanned, untethered underwater vehicle capable of carrying out simple activities with little or no human supervision. Simply put, it is a computer-controlled system (or a Robot) operating underwater.
MEC College of Engineering is an international technology school which is part of the Mahindra Group’s foray into the higher education sector. Mahindra Educational Institutions, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mahindra Group’s IT venture, Tech Mahindra, collaborated with Ecole Centrale Paris in 2014 to establish MEC colocated with the Tech Mahindra Technology Centre in Hyderabad. Ecole Centrale Paris (recently renamed as Centrale Supelec) is one of the oldest and most prestigious engineering institutions in France with a heritage that goes back to nearly 200 years
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles operate independently of humans and are self-guiding and self-powered vehicles. AUVs have a wide range of applications in marine sciences, and are increasingly being tested and used by commercial, civil and defence sectors. The AUV project is one of the most complicated in-house projects to take shape at Mahindra Ecole Centrale, with its inherent innovative integration of computer science, mechanical, electrical and electronics engineering, the AUV is currently capable of carrying out navigational and other tasks pre-fed into its memory with good precision and near-zero error.
“Our students continue to exhibit strong interests in R&D and creativity in building workable prototype devices and gadgets for different segments. Black Pearl is another such product where the students and their academic and research mentors worked tirelessly at our Centre for Robotics and created a robust Autonomous Underwater Vehicle. We are very proud to be creating New Engineers who work on complex projects, sharpen their technical and project management skills becoming more competitive, innovative and future-ready, true to the “Rise” philosophy of the Mahindra Group”, says Dr. Yajulu Medury, Director, Mahindra Ecole Centrale.
Prof. Arya Kumar Bhattacharya, Dean R&D, MEC, ensured knowledge sharing and mentoring on principles of system engineering went a long way in enabling the near flawless output within pre-set timelines. Faculty mentor, Dr. Sebastian Uppapalli of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Mahindra Ecole Centrale tirelessly mentored the students assigned to the project. The team primarily responsible for creating the AUV included Naval Pattar(Fabrication), Nishith(Design), Pulkit(Simulations), Suresh(Control and Embedded Systems), Srikanth Gadde(Control and Embedded Systems),Kartikeya(Vision Systems) while the overall project was led by Sai Madhavan (Team Lead), and Sai Kiran Kumar(Deputy Team Lead).
Weighing 19.6 Kgs, MEC’s Black Pearl is a fully autonomous operation and carries power onboard through a Lithium Polymer Battery. Powered by NVidia Jetson Nano Single board computer and Arduino micro controller, MEC’s Black Pearl is a free-swimming, untethered robot boasting of a Logical 270 vertical camera and Raspberry Pi V2 horizontal camera to take good quality images. Nearly Rs. 3,70,000 was spent in developing the vehicle in-house.
Source: Mahindra Group
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