Mahindra Ecole Centrale (MEC) has launched its first Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), christened Black Pearl. Created by MEC students and mentored by their professors, Black Pearl is a self-propelled, unmanned, untethered underwater vehicle capable of carrying out simple activities with little or no human supervision.
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 defense 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.
Weighing 19.6 Kgs, 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, the model is a free-swimming, untethered robot boasting of a Logical 270 vertical camera and Raspberry Pi V2 horizontal camera.
Speaking on the occasion, Yajulu Medury, Director, Mahindra Ecole Centrale, said, “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.
