MIT RAPID

Contact us at: rapid [at] mit [dot] edu Autonomous underwater vehicles are a critical tool for sampling oceanographic data such as thermoclines (for climate change monitoring) or oil plumes (for oil spill tracking). Current ocean exploration technologies are prohibitively expensive and slow; working solutions currently lack the versatility to respond on-the-fly to collect data and simultaneously to quickly assess large volumes undersea. RAPID is an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) platform designed to address these challenges by utilizing autonomy, streamlined mechanical design, and a novel sampling strategy to efficiently and adaptively collect volumetric chemical ocean data. RAPID is the product of a year-long mechanical engineering capstone class at MIT starting in September of 2019. Split into two semesters, the first semester focused on the initial conceptual design of RAPID, while the second semester was planned to focus on manufacturing an initial prototype of RAPID using MIT’s resources. The RAPID team of MIT students consists of 20 members, past and present, and includes undergraduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021 as well as several graduate students.