SnotBot

SnotBot is a collaboration between Olin College's Intelligent Vehicles Lab and Ocean Alliance.  The project is to develop a multicopter that the marine biologists could use to collect a sample of whale "snot" -- the fluids that are expelled from the blow hole of whales.  Marine biologists expect to find hormones, DNA, dead skin tissue, and a concentration of pollutants in the snot. 
There are a number of complexities in designing the SnotBot multicopter.  It has to be waterproof, still be able to take off from and land on a boat, be easily piloted by a marine biologist (since we will not always be able to go on expeditions with them), and it has to be powerful enough to lift the required payload to collect the sample.

Here's a link to another research group that's trying to solve the problem http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11447095

Prototype 1

Picture
Pre built kit Silas and I put together in a couple of weekends and test flew.  Hopefully we'll be able to put our working mechanism on here at some point in time (and make it waterproof)

Snot Shot

Picture
It's about 5 feet tall...
"Snot Shot" is our simulated whale spout that we are currently working on fine tuning so that we get the correct volume and consistency (that matches up at least visually) to the recorded footage given to us by Ocean Alliance.  It's primarily made out of 1" and 3" diameter pressure rated PVC and is released with a sprinkler valve.  It's pressurized through our compressed air system in the Large Project Building and will eventually be a modular system that we can deploy out of Lake Waban.
Picture
Future Robotics Lab and Education Center for Ocean Alliance

First test for Snot Shot: Sept 20, 2012

Snotbot, Generation 3 and 4

Snotbot Updates (9/18/2014)

The team (Silas Hughes ('14), Matt Rush ('14), and Jay Woo ('17)) got to go out on a trip to the gulf this summer (2014) and ran some tests to see what frequencies we generated with the multicopters in preparation for future deployments of collecting whale-blow samples.  We've been featured in a couple of places so far (and funnily enough, Gizmodo thought this website was the company commissioned to build the UAVs. Links below. Enjoy!

Boston Globe (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
io9 (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
Popular Science (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
Gizmodo (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
Engadget (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
Science Alert Australia/Nz (click here for link) (click here for pdf)
We're building another vehicle!

Silas and I are working on a re-design of the snot-collecting multicopter! Stay tuned for updates.
Picture
Another view of a potential future design for the new snotbot
Picture
Preliminary design of our future SnotBot (designed summer 2014)