{"id":26,"date":"2019-12-09T19:34:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T19:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/?p=26"},"modified":"2019-12-16T09:55:04","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:55:04","slug":"my-muddsub-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/my-muddsub-life\/","title":{"rendered":"My Mudd[Sub] Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seth Isaacson \u201921 describes himself as having been \u201cobsessed with robotics\u201d in high school. \u201cWhen I came to Mudd, I wasn\u2019t really done with it,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to do it at a higher level.\u201d Isaacson met Ginger Schmidt \u201921 and discovered she felt the same way. \u201cWe missed the community of our high school robotics teams and that extracurricular, STEM-focused aspect of our lives,\u201d says Schmidt.<\/p>\n

As they adjusted to their new, tightly scheduled lives at Harvey Mudd, Issacson and Schmidt couldn\u2019t shake their desire to work on robotics, even if it meant losing what was left of their free time. \u201cThat\u2019s where the idea for the Harvey Mudd Robotics Team (aka MuddSub) was born,\u201d Schmidt says.<\/p>\n

\"Students
Seth Isaacson \u201921, Ginger Schmidt \u201921 and Kyle Rong \u201922 check Alifie, the AUV they entered in the RoboNation RoboSub competition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Along with Diana Lin \u201922, Omari Matthews \u201921, Kyle Rong \u201922 and Daniel Yang \u201922, Isaacson and Schmidt founded the Harvey Mudd Robotics Team (aka MuddSub) in 2018. With support from the Shanahan Student-Directed Project Fund, the students designed, built and programmed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) named Alfie, which they entered in the annual RoboNation RoboSub competition in August 2019.<\/p>\n

Team MuddSub and Alfie held their own against AUVs from teams representing schools from 14 countries and several U.S. states. They made it to the semifinals, which was as far as they could have hoped to go, given the capability of Alfie\u2019s hardware, which is limited not by the team\u2019s ability but by its budget. Isaacson and Schmidt estimate it will take approximately $40,000 to make Alfie competitive at the highest level.<\/p>\n

Undaunted by budgetary constraints and buoyed by their success in the competition, the team began planning for the next academic year. They recruited more members, began to develop an organizational structure for the team and got to work on improving Alfie\u2019s software and hardware. As of fall 2019, Team MuddSub membership is close to 25 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of enthusiasm in the group,\u201d Isaacson says, noting that he\u2019s embraced the challenge of organizing so many people. \u201cGetting people up to speed on the project was a challenge because there\u2019s a lot of knowledge that goes into starting to make design decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

To help bridge the knowledge gap, Schmidt ran SolidWorks software workshops with all the team members. Motivating people to tackle such a large skill, especially outside of one\u2019s regular coursework, has proven to be challenging. \u201cUsually, a tradeoff of the Mudd course load is having to give up extracurricular activities like this,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/div>\n

But robotics is not something these students are willing to give up, for reasons beyond just their passion for the work. Both Isaacson and Schmidt say robotics experience is critical to their success after college. \u201cI think the necessity of work like this is something that should be taken more seriously here at Mudd,\u201d Isaacson says. \u201cEvery interview I have, this is what they ask about. This is what they want you to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schmidt agrees. \u201cInterviewers don\u2019t really care about what classes you\u2019ve taken because, in theory, engineering majors at all schools have taken the same classes and passed.\u201d<\/p>\n

What potential employers are interested in, Isaacson says, is \u201cwhat systems I\u2019m working on. Am I dealing with real data? Do I have experience with building a real system that is subject to less-than-ideal conditions? I think in terms of preparing students to do real world work, there\u2019s nothing better than projects like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, MuddSub requires programming, machining and electrical design. Team members also gain understanding of more intangible concepts, like the way one element of the project relates to another. For example, Issacson, a mathematics major, says, \u201cthe team with the best software wins.\u201d Schmidt, a mechanical engineer, says, \u201cwithout a robot, none of the programming matters.\u201d They both laugh, and Isaacson finds the truth in the middle: \u201cYour software is way easier to write if your robot is really good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organizational leadership is yet another skill required for MuddSub team members. In the early days, the founding team members set three guiding principles: Simplicity, scalability and stability. \u201cHaving defined our guiding principles early, when the team was only five people, turned out to be really helpful because it\u2019s very well-defined and outlined. It provides a way to have a rational conversation about what to use on the robot,\u201d Schmidt says.<\/p>\n

Guiding principles also help the team stay focused on the long-term goal of formalizing a competitive robotics team at Harvey Mudd, a logical goal, given the prevalence of robotics teams at other liberal arts, STEM-focused colleges and the popularity of MuddSub on campus.<\/p>\n

With a majority of first-year students making up the team, longevity looks possible. And recent funding news makes the goal seem even more attainable: A private donor has pledged $10,000 to the team, and MuddSub has again qualified to receive Shanahan Funds ($10,000).<\/p>\n

Looking to the future of Team Mudd Sub, Schmidt says she wants it to continue to become more organized. \u201cI\u2019d like us to be completely self-guided, produce our own tutorials for future teams,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Isaacson also has a vision for MuddSub: \u201cI want the team to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seth Isaacson \u201921 describes himself as having been \u201cobsessed with robotics\u201d in high school. \u201cWhen I came to Mudd, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-mudd-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/fall-winter-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}