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

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/ .

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

Strive for perfecction!

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html?page=0%2C0

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

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

Amazon image of Learning OpenCV

 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

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

This autonomous boat was mentioned on the recent, “The Latest in Hobby Robotics 4″ video. The website documenting the process is simple and clear. There are many photos of the process which gives a feel for the amount of effort that went into this creation. The final project is being used with the University of Oslo. They are mapping the bottoms of lakes and fjords in order to calculate a more accurate volume.

Sea Rendering

5 of the motors work really well and 1 takes about double the current of the other 5 to get going.

I’ll get the last motor done next week or so and tested so we can use it as a primary and keep the weaker motor as backup.

Joe

We had guest journalist Fernando Yates from the San Diego City College Times pop in and check out our weekly Saturday meeting a few weeks back, and it looks like his article is currently published in their online edition. We are very excited about the featured write up! Check it out here!

“Not many students would choose to have class on Fridays. Less still would choose to have class on Saturdays. The students that make up San Diego City Robotics choose to have class on Saturdays, and in class they build a robot.

San Diego City Robotics is linked to Engineering 50 in the catalog and has the goal of designing and building a functioning automated submarine to compete in the Navy’s international Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. Since 2007, the class has done just that.”

Sonar Principle. Source Wikimedia Commons, Georg Wiora

I just heard from Professor Pruitt that he got the sonar one step closer to completion. He wrote code that will take the three readings and analyze the middle one for a more accurate reading. I’ll find out more details later.

Our man from Make demonstrates the joys of using a breadboard… an actual board for cutting bread. According to Mr. Cunningham, before we had nice breadbaords from the good people at companies like Jameco or Mouser, folks used old slabs of wood pounded with little nail nodes. Nice thing about this technique, Collin says, is that you can make your circuit look just like your schematic. I concur, nice touch! Thanks for info Make.

“Yeah, we have some stuff in the back that needs to be inventoried.”

“OK.”

Shoe boxes of junk and funk. It was spread all out on the tables.

See:

If it looks like junk, it probably is junk.

Part 1 this past weekend was to get all the stuff into boxes with matching stuff. This weekend we will be making a list and posting it.

In case you’ve missed any of professor Pruitt’s demos on Saturday, here is a video by Collin Cunningham of Make Magazine doing a splendid job at explaining an oscilloscope.

I especially like the led indicators. Nice touch, Jen Ho.

Nice H Bridge, Chuck. By Chuck McManis, President of the Home Brew Robotics Club of Silicon Valley

This h bridge thing has got some serious write ups online. I found this nice article on how to use it with a transistor. They used the word ‘bane’ in context with h bridge. Sounds like this sort of mishap is commonplace in the robo-hobbyist world:

http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/robotics/tutorial/h-bridge/

Popular Mechanics DIY sub, illustration by Dogo

Holy smoke, this guy is either really brave or should be nominated for a Darwin Award. Check out this short  article at Popular Mechanics.

Kudos for the double breasted overcoat, just needs a tricorne hat to complete the Admiral look. How would you like to roll up to school in that thing? Assuming you attended school adjacent to a body of water, of course.

Structure of an H bridge (highlighted in red) by Cyril BUTTAY c/o Wikimedia.org CC

What’s an h-bridge? Why did it burn? People want to know. Thanks to the knowledgeable folks at Wikipedia, I found an answer, which naturally lead me to new and more obscure questions… but first the h-bridge. According to Wikipedia, it is used as a way to change voltage direction. I see where this would be handy with regards to our sub. It allows both forward and backward motion in the motor connected to the propellers. James was testing the new fancy propulsion system a la bilge pump disassemble when something started a-smoking. Turns out our little h-bridge got a bit too excited and decided to not be of use to us anymore. Poof!

Oh well, it was our only one on hand on Saturday, so we moved on to other things. I’m sure we can acquire a new one soon enough.

On a side note, if anyone else besides me is interested in learning more about how this works, I found a nice $20.00 kit on Adafruit. Not exactly the same, but I’m sure it can bestow some tangential nuggets of wisdom. Who could ask for anything more… than nuggets?

Staring at something interesting.

No fire pictured.

TOP SECRET CONFIDENTIAL TESTING

Some of the coming changes include:

• A photo gallery
• A “Sponsors” section, where potential sponsors can obtain more information
• Updated content pages
• Other minor design / content changes.

Keep your eye out for these changes and possibly more.

The preliminary rules for the 2011 RoboSub competition have been released. You can either view them on the competition website here, or, if you are a member of this site, go to the Team Discussion group.

I’d like to get the ME & EE folks started on documenting, labling, and removing the motors so we can get them cleaned up and water-proofed and re-installed so we can get back in the water and start testing again.

I’ve got an engraver and label-maker that we can use to label each motor so we can create a maintenance record for each motor.

In my mind, we’ll need to create a wiring diagram for each motor since not all the wiring is the same. Some of the power cords have different insulation colors than the others. This makes the documentation of the pin-outs critical when we start to remove the motors for maintenance.

I’ll bring some of my tools but I don’t beleive I have all the allen wrench sizes that we need. I may have some time to pick some up but I don’t want to rely on that. If anyone else is able to bring some tools that would be good.

Let me know if you have any issues with this.

Thanks,

Joe

Congratulations to all the teams.  Although we took a step backward in results this year, between our presentation award and a solid platform for next year our hopes are high.

So the first two large portions of the frame are now finished as you can see in this picture. There are still some supporting structure pieces to be finished, but soon the AUV will be constructed and the all encompassing task of putting in the wires can begin.  Also we will be able to move from the test frame to the actual AUV.  While having the test frame has been invaluable in getting into the pool much earlier this year than any other, it will be nice to see the actual AUV in action.  Our AUV this year is going to end up in the much more normal competition weight range of 30-40 lbs, but we think the added weight will help make our hardware programming much easier and perhaps point us in a direction to decrease weight for next year.

1. Cornell
2. UVIC
3. URI
4. UCF
5. UT @ Dallas
6. USC
7. FAU
8. U Maryland
9. Kyushu Institute of Technology
10. ETS
11. Amador Valley HS
12. iBotics
13. US Naval Academy
14. Delhi College of Engineering
15. San Diego City Robotics
16. NC State U
17. Saint George’s School
18. VT
19. U Toronto MDA
20. UF
21. ARVP
22. MIT
23. SPSU
24. Embry Riddle
25. KAIST
26. UWF
27. U Ottawa
28. Pacific Nautilus
29. U Colorado @ Denver
30. McGill U

Best new team: St. George’s School
Most with the Least: FAU
Best technical paper: Kyushu
TSA Award: Embry Riddle

**********************************************************************
The competition was as always: fun, stressful, hot n’ dirty, wet and wild, and very good experience for any engineer. This year our team was able to cleanly qualify on the second day of practice. In each of our two Heats we were able to manuver straight and thru the gate. Our depth and course correction code was definietly working better than in last years competition and the vision and sonar were a lot closer to integration than ever before. While our 15th place finish might seem a bit disappointing, It is important to note that teams this year were more successful than ever in completing the course. Cornell’s final run attempted every task and except for missing the targets with thier droppers was successful in EVERY task. I’m sure competitors realize just how amazing an accomplishment that is.

Anyway watch this site for updates as I’ll be doing so with a lot more regularity than we have in the past.
–Max G. Roshensky, Webmaster at Large.