A year ago, I joined my University's independent IEEE group. Back then, I was presented with an Autonomous delivery Robot project, as well as an Autonomous Underwater Drone project, which is the one I chose. Initially led by a semi-detached Bachelor's thesis student, I first worked on the organization and chaotic documentation of the project. After many unanswered questions, and seemingly getting nowhere, I understood that poor teamwork skills, little coherent communication, and lack of care were to blame for the pace of the AUD project.
Long story short, the student graduated and left the project to me, convincing me to do so after I had already declined. After I made the project my own, a major question brewed in my head: why don't we learn while building, instead of just doing research in vain? I wanted to distance the project from needless research and theoretical applications superfluous to our immediate needs. Because of this, I used my basic coding and microcontroller knowledge and expanded it by learning about Arduino, ESP32, and others alike.
Since then, I have been able to advance the project, initially as a team, but now, individually, due to the lack of care from others. Even though the AUD is a submarine, underwater communication can be expensive and not ideal for a casual project by uni students, which ultimately turned the project into a DIY Boat, to enable the use of different wireless communication methods. And with this, I aim to make the vehicle more autonomous, albeit step by step.
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