San Diego City Robotics

We’ll be making our 1st Semifinal round run tomorrow (Friday) at 10am. After not being able to get in the water on Tuesday due to water-leak issues on the sonar box, we attempted and completed our qualifying run by going through the gate autonomously on our first attempt Wednesday.

We spent yesterday and today testing mission plans for how we can best target the sub for achieving the most points. We’re finding that we’re navigating and maintaining heading with no issues, but the foam we’re using for additional buoyancy is compressing due to our depth – and taking on water. Since we had been just slightly positively buoyant, this is causing us to sink. The Maryland team has been very gracious and given us some of their “perfect solution” closed cell foam, that will neither compress nor take on water. Derrick stayed late as the zip-tie enginner this afternoon ensuring that we’re level, and dive/ascend adequately to run tomorrow with our new pink foam!

The placement that determined your semi-final round run time tomorrow was determined by the order in which our team qualified overall so far – and we were 16th. There has been a total of 21 teams to have qualified, out of 31 total from 10 countries.

James and Derrick along with the top officals from the AUVSI Foundation were featured alongside the Kraken on the tv morning show San Diego Living this morning! Check it out:

http://tinyurl.com/6llsvz4

We completed the final portion of static judging this afternoon, where we stood in front of a room full of approximately 20 judges giving a 30 minute powerpoint presentation w/ interactive Q&A of our team and sub. I feel good about how we represented ourselves, and thought everyone did great. The total score including our paper, website, team uniform, and presentation will be tallied tomorrow after all teams have presented. That will be our “Static Judging Score” that coincides with the ranking order for picking our 2nd semi-final run time on Saturday.

I encourage all current and past team, class, and club members to come out and see the competition this weekend! SeaPerch is having their first competition here in San Diego on site tomorrow, as well as events taking place through the weekend along side RoboSub at the Transdec. No waiver is required! Friday is media day so lots of people will be onsite – and Sat/Sun is when the public really comes out. They’re really trying to make it a family event, and have improved how they present the competition alot with the inclusion of a “jumbotron” wall of tv’s hanging from a giant forklift.

Theres multiple camera views of each sub provided by Seabotics rovers and divers during each run. We’re now able to see the run, and control/test the sub from perspectives like never before – and its fun!

Onward and Downward!

Jose

Happy to see everyone at the meeting this morning!

One of the topics we went over earliest on was about the importance of communications.   One of the best ways of achieving effective Robotics Team communications is on the website – communications between team members and team leaders,  communications between the new members wanting to become hands-on and the old pros looking to delegate,  members wanting to share links and general info ….  Basically what it all comes down to is  becoming proactive and more website-oriented.  So far we have mostly been lurking.  Blog!  If you want to know want you can do, ask!   How do you do something?  Post a question!  Nothing is too big or too small for the website.  If one of our geniuses can’t help you,  I’m sure that someone can at least begin to point you in the right direction. If you have a concern or want to share something of interest feel free to do that here also.  This is your website.

There are different settings members can use here for receiving news and updates.  It is possible to get group info via your email without logging in everyday if you so choose.   If you would like to post something,  James has provided something called Dashboard where you will find the appropriate means to be able to create your own posts.  Under the title bar, but above the tool bar, you will find icons to add images, audio, video and media.

Jose asked that everyone try to come up with three ideas for Sponsors.   Compiling ideas and contact information would be useful.

And for the code people…. a little fun:   http://css-tricks.com/1660-jquery-robot/ .

Me again.

The following information was brought in today (Sat. 9/24) by someone  from outside the team who thought we might find it useful or interesting.    Check out     diydrones.com    for info on directional cosine matrices (DCMs).   He says to  look  under the title Compass Headings.  This should provide information and links to Google code pages  He couldn’t give me any more info than that as this isn’t his particular area of expertise, however, he was able to give quite a bit more info to Jose and James.  I suggest you check out the website for yourself.   Enjoy!

diydrones.com

We had a great opportunity this morning to appear on San Diego Living!

Here’s some shots from todays leak test. We ran the sub through series of timed submersions to confirm the water tightness of the ports and possible points of failure in the housings. Everything looked good, and we’re ready to move on to propulsion and sensors!

Anyone interested in learning about the vision code library can find the online manual here:

http://opencv.willowgarage.com/documentation/c/index.html

There is a book on the subject from O’Reilly Media,

Amazon image of Learning OpenCV

Thought you might like to come to this…..

 Just in case you have not RSVP’d yet but wanted to join us Thursday evening for dinner, the topic will be about the Navy UCAS (Unmanned Combat Air System) and Mr. Tighe “Tiger” Parmenter, Business Development Manager, Navy UCAS IPT will be the speaker at this month’s AUVSI San Diego Lindbergh Chapter Dinner, this Thursday, April 28th. AUVSI is also a great networking tool!

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is the world’s largest nonprofit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community. AUVSI, with members from government organizations, industry and academia, is committed to fostering, developing, and promoting unmanned systems and related technologies. AUVSI provides opportunities for information exchange, networking and business development and is the best resource for simply learning about unmanned systems or for staying abreast of the latest program and technology updates.

San Diego is at the forefront of unmanned systems technology – rich in technology in both the Public and Private Sectors, San Diego is the ideal region for conduction an effective business interface for the mutual benefit of all members.

The San Diego Lindbergh Chapter is dedicated to the advancement of Unmanned Systems and Technology in the greater Southwest region. The Chapter enthusiastically engages in initiatives with the public and private sector for the advancement and advocacy of Unmanned Systems, and is a value added resource for the integration and interoperability of space, air, ground, sea and undersea systems.

The agenda, biography for Mr. Parmenter and the dinner menu is attached. Please RSVP today if you’d like to come.

 Thank you and hope to see you there,

 Monica England

 The AUVSI San Diego Lindbergh Chapter – “The Global Center of Excellence for Unmanned Systems and Technology”

www.auvsisandiego.com

Save the date – October 31 – Nov 3rd – USIC 2011

Pass it on:

http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/vol/2325115032.html