General Questions
Most team members take CUSail for 3 credits. Freshmen or members in their first semester on the team usually take CUSail for 1 credit. If you are taking CUSail for 3 credits, we expect members to put in about 9 hours of work per week. If you are taking CUSail for 1 credit, we expect members to put in about 3 hours of work per week. However, most team members find themselves putting in more work because they care and are passionate about their projects! The classes that team members enroll in to receive credit for their work on CUSail are MAE 4900, ENGRG 1401, and ENGRG 3400.
No programming experience is required.
Yes. When new members join the team, we give everyone an overview of everything our boat does. New members are paired with an experienced member who will be there as their mentor to answer any questions they have while they work on onboarding projects. We also have a large amount of documentation from past years, so there are plenty of resources for our new members to learn from!
The Navigation team uses C++, Python, Arduino, and MATLAB. They also use EAGLE to design our custom PCBs. The Mechancial team uses SolidWorks, Autodesk Fusion 360, ANSYS, and MATLAB. The Business team uses the Adobe Suite and iMovie.
CUSail has a very fun atmosphere! Everyone on the team is very friendly, and whenever we are doing work everyone is having fun and enjoying themselves. Everyone is very supportive of each other and always willing to help out another team member.
Application Questions
We recruit new members at the beginning of every fall semester, and sometimes at the beginning of the spring semester depending on need. Our next recruitment period will be Fall 2019.
The first step is to submit your application. We will review your application and then reach out for an interview if we think you are a good fit for the team.
We look for students who show enthusiasm in their applications. We want members who are passionate and will contribute to our team. We look for applications that clearly show effort. If you have any questions about your application please be sure to email cusail@cornell.edu and we will be happy to answer any questions you have!
About Us
CUSail is a Cornell Engineering Project Team that works together as a team to build a fully autonomous robotic sailboat for competition and oceanic research. We hope that from our experiences in the competition we can achieve our long term goal of finding an optimal boat design to create a fleet of autonomous vessels.
