Seabase I Overview
As JoAnn Durst tells it in her minutes, one of the main ideas behind doing a senior design project is "to get CS students as close as possible to doing real-world software design." On 9-10-04 she and her team members (Ken Lundy and Bob Marin) met with Hank Taylor (the clients representative from Mechanical Engineering) and Dave Voelker (their professor in the class) to get some background on the proposed project and, as JoAnn says "decide if we want to do the crane project and how to proceed."
The project they are shown is called "Seabase," a ship-mounted crane that is used to lift containers and pass them between ships at sea. The US Navy, who is sponsoring the project, has a crane that does that now, but their current controller can only work when the waves are gentle: they want something that will work when the weather gets rough. The new controller will correct for the pitching of the ship by using inverse kinematics to dampen the movement of the crane. Two priorities for the new controller are that it be maintainable and expandable.
The Seabase Project itself is divided into three parts. One team from Computer Science will create the new controller. The two other teams will be formed with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering students: one team will build a model of the new crane, the other a motion platform (like simulation rides where you get in the box and it wiggles) to simulate sea conditions).
How did they do? Hear the results of the Seabase Project.