A Productive Week

This week the team was able to do two days of pool testing which helped us to identify a couple of areas in the control code where we could optimize and improve the overall vehicle performance. Our mission devices have all been designed and we are waiting for a few of the last pieces to arrive before we attach them to the vehicle.

The vehicle's cameras are currently being trained to the competition elements that we constructed. (More Pictures of those photo album on the right side)
Here are a few of the pictures from the testing this week.

Returned and Working

The entire team is back now and our team Captain even got married! Here is a picture of him and his new wife at the Wedding and in Barbados during their Honeymoon.

Another week has gone by and progress has been achieved. Numerous hurdles have been overcome including the fixing of the addition to kill switch relay and getting rid of a battery. One of our problems was that it seemed like the vehicle would recieve intermitent commands to the thrusters. this resulted in some serious code searching for probelms. However, it seems the fault lay with a bad battery. Right now the vehicle can maintain a stable depth, reasonable heading control, and waypoint navigation all at the same time. Additionally, we have the dropper board installed inside of the vehicle and ready to be used. It seems our biggest hurdle now will be finding places to put everything onto the vehicle. Maybe we''ll give this turtle some legs. Either way our vehicle is now more capable than the vehicle we had at the end of last years compeition ahcieving an almost .1 m accuracy to waypoints can maintain that point within .3 m. Next week all the troops will be assembled and we shall see how much we can do. The video is of the vehicle sucessfully completing the box test, drive a series of waypoints in the shape of a box below the water while maintinging a depth of 1 foot. The only real issue seems to be a need for better heading control and that without the weight of the cameras the vehicle pitches but those should be resolved before the competion.

Its been a while

I guess we have been slacking when it comes to posting recent developments. That will happen when graduation, comission, final exams, and one team member getting married all occur at the same time. Anyway, currently we have constructed an entire mock up of the course we will be facing in San Deigo so that we will be able to fully test of AUV prior to the compeition. Hopefully this means we can post video prior to the competition to instill fear amongst our foes, but we'll see. The kill switch has also been modified to accomodate the new rules requiring the kill switch to be on and magnet passed over a reed switch to allow the thrusters to power on . The new DVL has been fully integrated into the programing code. We have also finally managed to get the power supply issues to our wireless router completely figured out, freeing us of the infernal Xbee and hyperterminal. For those who don't know what those are, consider yourself lucky. Additionally, we have recieved and calibrated our new compass, a TCM 2.6, and it seems to working fine. Maybe just maybe, we will have a reliable compass but it has yet to be installed. The guy in charge of the forward instrument case is dillydalling in some sunny locale. That is all for now and I will post as more as things occur.