Dallas students' sub project stolen

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Jul 9, 2007 Submarine Stolen From Dallas Engineering Students

(CBS) DALLAS A group of Dallas engineering students is pleading for the public's help after a submarine was stolen from one of them, reports CBS station KTVT-TV in Dallas.

The miniature machine was a Southern Methodist University student project that was headed to a naval competition in San Diego next week.

Saturday night, one of the student's says it was stolen out of one of the student's cars.

The group spent most of Sunday passing out flyers and asking for the public's help.

They say the project is extremely important because the sub represents the hard work of a group of 15 engineering students who have spent the last six months working on the project.

The project could potentially convince SMU to include the hands on experience in their curriculum.

"We built it completely from scratch. We started out back in January with basically nothing," said Andrew Murphy, one of the submarine creators. "We've been working feverishly for the last two months to get it where it was driving through the water and working like it was supposed to."

The students are offering $500 for the return of the sub, with no questions asked. If anyone sees it, please call the SMU police department

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Subbed robot sub does well

SMU

Subbed robot sub does well

SMU team's Seahorse stand-in takes 9th in national competition



12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 17, 2007

By JENNI BEAUCHAMP / The Dallas Morning News
jbeauchamp@dallasnews.com


Seahorse was a robotic submarine out of water.

But the thieves who stole the machine and left it for scrap almost two weeks ago in a Dallas alley couldn't sink its team's award-winning finish in the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in San Diego.

Seahorse and the Southern Methodist University Robotics Club team that engineered it placed ninth overall in the international contest last weekend and received $1,000 in prizes.

The sub – actually a replica built after the theft and named Seahorse I Mark II– competed against 27 robots, including entries from MIT, Cornell University and the University of Texas at Dallas.

"We put a lot of work into it [the original] over the last several months, and we picked a design that was easy to replicate and that helped us a lot," said Nathan Huntoon, president of the Robotics Club and head of the team that built Seahorse.

His group won two awards, including one for Perseverance in the Face of Adversity, which came with a $500 prize. It was the six-month-old club's first competition.

"Everybody knew about what happened. It had been posted on the Web site for the competition and on a submarine news service and on blogs," said Mr. Huntoon, who is an engineering graduate student.

People were like, 'Oh you're that team.' There was a lot of people rooting for us and we got quite a bit of recognition for being able to pull it through and for everything that happened, probably much more than we would have received."

But, he added, "I still would have rather it not been stolen."

The club won its second $500 for snappy responses to a specific set of commands.

Even though Seahorse's creators didn't score high enough to compete in the finals, they are still pleased with the results.

"That is absolutely more that I expected. I didn't expect to come home with any prize money," Mr. Huntoon said. "We were one of two teams who were new in the top 10. And, actually, out of the top six of last year, we beat three."

He said the club plans to use the prize money to come up with a new design for next year's competition.

But that doesn't mean Seahorse's career is over.

"We are going to keep it and probably use it as a recruiting tool for engineering at SMU," Mr. Huntoon said, "and take it to high schools in Dallas and the area to get kids interested."