Cowyak (2022)

Motivation:

My friends and I wanted to work on a project in the last few days on campus our senior year. Originally, we wanted to put a sonar on the cowyak to map the bottom of the Charles river, but we ran out of time. Instead, we put our friend in the river and drove her around for about an hour (at which point the batteries died).

Description:

Cowyak is a remote controlled, full sized kayak. Cowyak was a group project. I helped mainly with fabrication and shop supervision. The Cowyak started with a foldable kayak. The carbon fiber tubes are drilled and then bolted in. They support a sonar and use two water jet mounts for motors. The bell is a spray painted can filled with nuts. The flags were spray painted using a laser cut template and support was sewn in the pink visibility flag. The spots were vinyl cut. The Cowyak is powered with two drill batteries stored inside the boat.

Lessons Learned:

There is a reason why the original kayak was foldable. We couldn’t get the cowyak into the elevator once we put the motor mounts on, so had to carry it up 5 flights of stairs through our dorm’s lounges to finish up the project. For a project that was built in under 48 hours, it turned out great!