National PEP (Promoting Electric Propulsion) Competition
Problem statement
Imagine working incredibly hard, your whole last year of college, designing and innovating one of the very few full-sized outboard electric boats in the country. Only for the competition to come around and your boat has an electric short on the final stretch of the race. Leaving it floating dead in the water. The wiring short was between the motor and the motor controller, the motor controller was swapped out but it still didn’t start. Unfortunately the short causes other equipment damage, meaning this issue spread and has the potential to cause the permanent loss of such an important project. Lastly, not only is the boat dysfunctional but without someone to repair it since the whole team has graduated along with the rest of the Wisconsin Autonomous Engineering Society (WAVES) members.
Competition teams from our peers’ schools have made similar boats. However, they were as small as RC boats and could not perform both man and unmanned operations. In fact, Wisconsin Team WAVES’ boat was the only boat in last year’s competition to be able to compete in both the manned and unmanned races.
The Catalina senior design team aims to reinvigorate the WAVES team, giving hands-on engineering experience, cross-disciplinary collaboration potential, and strengthening the University’s reputation in the electric transportation industry. The Catalina team plans to do so by remedying the boat’s faulty wiring and continuing its journey towards becoming fully autonomous. Ultimately, their end goal is to enable the boat to work in both manned and unmanned operations and lay the foundation for future autonomous tech installations.
Team members
Coleman Kennelly – facilitator
John Koth – accountant
Max Janke – admin
Matthew Green – communicator
Client
Promoting Electric Propulsion (Competition)
American Society of Naval Engineers