It works!

It's works and works and works. It drove around the small dolphin pool and was able to locate the pinger. Now the guys are working on color recognition with a red silicon pot holder.

In other news, I have acquired team "uniforms" for Friday's competition, as required. They consist of five navy t-shirts of indifferent quality. But they only cost $20!

Tonight will almost certainly be spent in the hotel pool with some Chinese takout. It looks to be a long next couple of days (if 14 hour days weren't already enough!).

Minor Setback...

Our sub had a leak during a practice run and the electronics compartment was flooded.

But, the guys took everything apart and cleaned all the boards with alcohol and re-soldered a couple things and put it all back together, and now they're about to throw it in the pool to make sure it works. I'm crossing my fingers and knocking on wood.

First Day of Competition

Yesterday was the first day of competition. We arrived at 7:00 am to unload our equipment and set up our booth. Each team has a tent with a couple of tables; these tents circle the perimeter of the TRANSDEC (that’s what the facility is called) and surround the pool. “Pool” isn’t quite an accurate word, though; this thing is closer to a big pond. Our booth is wedged beside the University of Marlyand, which has—lets’ count them—13 team members skittering around. They are busy, busy bees. On our other side is Amador Valley High School Robotics Club. We’re pretty impressed that a bunch of high schoolers are competing alongside undergraduate and graduate students. The kind of skills needed to compete here aren’t exactly taught in the average high school. Kudos to them.

We found ourselves making a madcap trip to Home Depot when we suddenly started missing the practice crate that Chris constructed back in Texas. Lots of PVC pipe, orange electrical tape, and one hour later, we had ourselves an orange crate to practice finding and picking up.

Down to the nitty-gritty: we recalibrated the PIDs for the depth sensor. This means that in the morning, Seahorse was listing back and forth, fluttering in the water, but once we recalibrated it, it became much more stable. We also acquired the correct color value for the buoy and the safe, and we did acquisition and tracking on those things. (Meaning that we found out the exact color of the buoy and were able to find them in the water.) Lastly we listened for actual pinger data on the real hydrophones and adjusted our robot to the competition frequencies.

We had three practice times yesterday. We qualified for the competition on the very first try by driving through an underwater gate. These practices were more than just practice, though. Our performances then determine who gets to choose their competition times first.

And that was yesterday. Now let’s see about today.

Orientation

This morning was spent at various hardware and supply stores: Home Depot, Harbor Freight, West Marine. This afternoon and evening will be spent making the kill switch work.

Orientation involved lots of powerpoint presentations and talking. It took about two hours, but I can sum up the important points pretty quickly:

• We'll be on a naval base, so we shouldn't do anything illegal or dangerous or stupid, because that would end very badly for us.


• The Navy uses dolphins and sea lions to do stuff and find things! Super cool!


• We were given the password for the wireless internet. Which we need to update our blog.


• They don't yet know what the frequency of the pinger is. Which is really the only thing we wanted to know.
  

We went to dinner, where Mike mistook the salmon on our pizza for tomatoes and Amanda attempted to explain the differences between humanism, posthumanism, and postmodernism. The Mai Tai she drank made this all quite difficult.

In other news, congratulations go out to Mike and his wife, who are expecting a baby this December.

Worldly Travelers

Nineteen hours is a long time to be in a car. It was an interesting journey, though.

Andrew and Nathan argued about how much cheese goes on a Pizza Hut pizza. We ate at Speedy’s Restaurant in Pecos, Texas for lunch yesterday. They had peach cobbler with fresh peaches in it. Mmm. Andrew got pulled over for driving a teensy bit too fast and showed off our robot to the interested patrolman. We discussed everything from the Iraq-Iran war (Nathan's reading The Great War for Civilization by Robert Fisk) to how a man-on-woman-on-tiger threesome might be possible (Amanda's reading Wicked by Gregory McGuire. Much racier than the musical).

And now we're in San Diego, feeling much more relaxed than we did at this time last year. There's really no more work to be done on the robot until we can put it in the pool. Except for the kill switch. I nicely reminded Andrew that leaving the kill switch to the last minute last year resulted in a circus-like frenzy.

Maybe I can talk everyone into going to the zoo tomorrow before orientation...

Last minute testing

It's been a long week of 15 hour days. The Robotics Club has taken more meals together this week than most American nuclear families. But, after much testing, our efforts have paid off.

Today, Seahorse III drove underwater while maintaining headings and depths and tilts and I'm sure many other important things. Coolest of all, Seahorse was able to drive toward the pinger and stop right on top of it from a dead start facing away from the pinger! Hurrah!

Tomorrow we will pack up anything we could possibly need and load it into a rented suburban. Two of us will set off across Texas in that suburban on Sunday (Because putting our baby in cargo? Not an option.), while another two will hop on a plane on Monday.

Interesting factoid of the day: Texas is big. We'll start in Dallas and drive halfway to San Diego before we stop for the night. And we'll still be in Texas. El Paso. Is that crazy or what?

The tests continue...

Seahorse III underwent leak tests today and passed with flying colors. The main compartment was actually so watertight that a vacuum was created, and the air inside the compartment condensed and got colder! Plus, the lid makes nice squelching noise when taken off, so we're pretty sure that no water is getting in this robot.

In other news, Chris has built an apparatus to hold the pinger machine underwater. Most of this apparatus is painted light blue, so that the robot won't be able to differentiate it from the water. This crate is made of PVC pipe and is nearly invisible when it's sitting at the bottom of the pool. This way, the robot can only rely on the sound of the pings sent out by the pinger when it attempts to find it.

What the robot will be able to see is the smaller PVC crate, which is painted red and orange. Its distinct colors allow the robot's vision systems to pick it out from its surroundings.

The tests continue...

Guess who's looking pretty?

Seahorse III just got back from Custom Powder Coating and is sporting a brand new paint job!