Video from 2010

Check out this youtube video of our run that won us 2nd Place overall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDqCgpJi2o

All Packed up and Shipping out

We have packed up the AUV and sent it out to San Diego. We'll be able to put it back to working order by noon Tuesday.

Great Finish to a Bad Week

Last Friday we managed to fry all four of our thrusters and we have no idea how it happened.  We came in Friday morning after I-Day for the class of 2014, we planed to take the vehicle to the pool that morning so we tried to conduct a brief test in the lab before heading to the pool.  Upon discovering that some of the thrusters where not working properly, so we began trouble shooting.  In the process of trouble shooting we managed to create a large spark.  We have no idea how it happened but for the rest of Friday and all of Tuesday we tried to find what caused the problem.  By the end of the day we found that we had damaged the D2A board and after replacing that everything work fine.  We have had to replace all of the thrusters, find a leak, and fix the leak. Today we have managed to tweak our heading control and conduct waypoint driving all without our camera box because it is currently in the machine shop or our vertical thrusters (we only had 3 spare thrusters).

Tomorrow we start packing in order to have the vehicle and everything we need in San Diego when we show up so we can hit the ground running in San Diego.

5ft Depth Test

6.29.2010 Pool Tests

Today was the first day the entire team took the AUV down to conduct some tests in the pool. We took the AUV to the diving well in Lejeune Hall to tweak the gains on the controllers. You can see from the graph that the initial gains caused the vehicle to be unstable, but for the second test we changed the gains and it worked well even with a disturbance. We also worked on the heading and pitch controllers.  Although they aren't quite where we want them for competition, we have been able to make significant improvements.  Today was very productive but we won't work much for the next two days because we have been loaned out to help with I-Day here at the Academy.  Come friday and next week we will be in full swing.

USNA AUV Team 2010

USNA is getting ready for the 2010 AUVSI.  We've got only 4 team members this year and our project adviser is still CAPT Jack. Team Captain is 2ndLT Joseph Jennett, with 2ndLT Kevin Fleischer working with the cameras.  ENS Harry Davis and MIDN 1/C Paul Schouppner are working on the programs.  So far this year we have changed out the DVL, redesigned the power supply, rewritten the code, and created some new circuit boards that replace two old circuit boards.  We also had to fix the tail of the frame that held the aft thruster on after it broke earlier this year.

 

Starting next week, for the first time this summer, the entire team will be here working on the vehicle at the same time.  We've all got different schedules and other things we have to do, but for the next couple of week everything will be about winning the 2010 AUVSI....

After the Competition

AUVSI 09 Day 2

It's been a long day for the USNA AUV team we left the hotel for testing at 4:50am and didn't finish until almost 8pm, making for an exhausted, but satified team. The vehicle performed very well today, qualifying in the first seconds after being lowered into the TRANSDEC and proving that it's robust design has great potential for the competition.

Below is a combination of all the pictures that we took of all the other team's vehicles in the AUVSI competition and them working around the pool.

AUVSI Day 1

Today was a long but progressive day. We arrived yesterday evening late after barely making our flight connection in Atlanta.

This morning we expected to have our vehicle at the TRANSDEC facility waiting for us be unfortunately it didn't arrive until 2 hours later. Not being deterred, we at breakfast at the nearest Denny's and to our surprise met a USNA alumni which covertly and graciously paid for our breakfast!

After we picked up our gear, we headed over to a nearby pool for testing where we spent most of the day threshing out any possible bug we could stir up.

During the testing Captain Nicholson and Sayre took a trip to the Tecnadyne company, who refurbished two of our thrusters, where we got a tour of the literally "in house" workshop where our thrusters were built.

To finish the long day we ate a satifying dinner at Olive Garden and made plans to leave our hotel at 4:50am tomorrow morning to begin testing again.

(The picture is of the TRANSDEC facility that we will be competing in)

Shipped!

Today we shipped our vehicle. After very promising testing yesterday we are excited about the upcoming competition and our odds against other teams. We were able to use pelican cases for transport this year, giving us peace of mind as to the safety of our vehicle and tools during transport.

San Diego here we come!