Weekend Pool Test
We've been working hard all weekend trying to get SeaBee II up and working again. Our faulty thruster from last year's competition that caused us innumerable headaches has finally been purged from the vehicle. We replaced it with one of the new thrusters that had been purchased for SeaBee III. That was the final fix we needed to take care of the only real mechanical/electrical problems we experienced last year, so all that is left is for Mike and Lior to get the planning and vision algorithms going full-swing.
Last night we watched SeaBee II run around following pipes without any trouble at all, and today we are incorporating the buoy and the "air duct" tasks as Kevin finishes building them. Overall this weekend has been a huge success!
SeaBee III is looking great, but so far that is just about all it is doing. I uncovered a few flaws in my mechanical work which will need to be corrected, but more importantly the electronics just aren't coming together as we had hoped. We have fully prototyped our power/motor control/sensor board and it works great! But unfortunately the CPU backplane just wouldn't cooperate on the first try. We are hoping to respin a new board in the next week or two and it should work on that next try. Phil has our sonar system nearly completed and it will be good to get it in the water in a week or two to see if all of his planning and coding will produce a perfect result on the first try! This would be a great addition to throw on to SeaBee II, and it would showcase just a little bit of what we have in the works for SeaBee III. When this new AUV comes together over the next couple of months we will have a remarkable platform for software testing for next year's competition, and almost the entire school-year worth of wet test opportunities for the software team to utilize.
SeaBee II is now officially dubbed "Old Reliable" for her unerring ability to come through for us when we need her!
- Chris
Last night we watched SeaBee II run around following pipes without any trouble at all, and today we are incorporating the buoy and the "air duct" tasks as Kevin finishes building them. Overall this weekend has been a huge success!
SeaBee III is looking great, but so far that is just about all it is doing. I uncovered a few flaws in my mechanical work which will need to be corrected, but more importantly the electronics just aren't coming together as we had hoped. We have fully prototyped our power/motor control/sensor board and it works great! But unfortunately the CPU backplane just wouldn't cooperate on the first try. We are hoping to respin a new board in the next week or two and it should work on that next try. Phil has our sonar system nearly completed and it will be good to get it in the water in a week or two to see if all of his planning and coding will produce a perfect result on the first try! This would be a great addition to throw on to SeaBee II, and it would showcase just a little bit of what we have in the works for SeaBee III. When this new AUV comes together over the next couple of months we will have a remarkable platform for software testing for next year's competition, and almost the entire school-year worth of wet test opportunities for the software team to utilize.
SeaBee II is now officially dubbed "Old Reliable" for her unerring ability to come through for us when we need her!
- Chris