Nov 20 2014
Students from 15 universities around the world took up a challenge to outfit an unmanned surface vehicle with sensors, computers and software, then get the vehicle to complete a course based on various maritime missions.
The students traveled to Singapore for the competition, which took place in the Marina Bay on October 20, 2014 and ran for seven days. The MIT/Olin RobotX team took first place in the finals on Sunday, October 26 using a vehicle powered by American Portwell Technology’s (http://www.portwell.com) NANO-6060, an Intel® Atom™ E3800 family processor SoC-based Nano-ITX board with dual display, dual Gigabit Ethernet, audio, USB 3.0, microSD and SATA. American Portwell Technology, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Portwell, Inc., a world-leading innovator in the embedded computing market and a Premier member of the Intel® IoT Solutions Alliance.
“We were pleased when the MIT/Olin RobotX team approached us to use the NANO-6060 to power their entry, the USV: Athena-Nike,” says Allen Lee, CEO of American Portwell Technology, Inc. “We are proud to play a part in their success and extend our heartfelt congratulations on winning first place in this challenge.”
Two-time First Place Winner
The course was based on various maritime missions. On the course, each team’s vessel had to complete a set of tasks including the avoidance and detection of obstacles, identifying and reporting on a specified target and searching underwater for an acoustic source. The MIT/Olin RobotX team won first place overall in the 2014 AUVSI Maritime RobotX Challenge in Singapore. They also placed second in land-based judging and took first place again in the best paper category with their unmanned vessel, the USV: Athena-Nike.
According to MIT/Olin team captain, Arthur Anderson, the Portwell NANO-6060 computers were selected for the optimal combination of low power consumption, processor performance, available interface ports, and the Nano-ITX form factor. “The NANO-6060’s dual-LAN ports allowed connection to the 3D laser sensor and concurrently to the local network,” Anderson explains. “Computer vision, GPS and other sensors connected through the computer’s USB ports. The dual-core Atom processor managed data processing with ease while fitting within the power budget,” he adds.
More information about the MIT/Olin team can be found at: robotx.mit.edu.
Further information about the Portwell NANO-6060 Nano-ITX embedded system board can be found at: http://www.portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=NANO-6060
Source: http://www.portwell.com/