One of our summer placement student’s Aaron Page reports on his summer with FSI as part of the Maritime Robotics Lab. This was a paid internship the University of Southampton’s EXCEL scheme we will be advertising similar opportunities for next summer in the spring.

As a recently graduated electromechanical engineer from the University of Southampton, having the opportunity to spend two months at the highly regarded Bolderwood innovation campus with the FSI (Fluid Interactions Group) department was a fantastic opportunity to apply my studies to a real word engineering application. During my time I was working on a new control architecture for the Motors and Rudders on a previously student designed and built vessel called Fortitude this alongside further refitting will lead to long term deployments in the transatlantic and other areas for data gathering missions.
The project allowed me to apply my knowledge of control theory, whilst allowing me to further develop my skills as a programmer. I was given complete freedom to peruse the objective allowing me to approach it in the way I believed would yield the best results, this alongside regular weekly meetings with my supervisors ensured all options, and potential issues were highlighted and investigated. Various control methods were considered and how they could later be integrated with different autonomous control approaches and object avoidance algorithm’s, ensuring future steps in this multi-layered project are as smooth as possible. Being involved so early in this project has also given me the opportunity to identify problems that may be encountered later on in the projects life as well as make suggestions that may alter the direction of hardware selection.
Being invited to the weekly FSI seminar meetings where PhD students gave presentations on their research, furthered my knowledge of a field I had very little exposure to previously. This, alongside the summer events run by the staff and PhD students, has made my time with them very enjoyable.
This internship, run in partnership with the EXCEL scheme, has helped me developed a range of skills that I will now be applying as I start my PhD at the University of Southampton within ECS. I hope to remain involved with the project and look forward to seeing how it develops over the next couple of years.