Project update July 2020

Testing

We did a full system test of our Scout-Alpha prototype. We tested for thermal issues and total thrust. It turned out to be a lot more work than we thought to fix all little issues!

Below is a video summarizing our progress.

We’re very happy with the result and it’s extremely motivating to see the robot we’ve been working on for the last 7 months in our little swimming pool.d!

Upgrades

We’re moving forward to pursue open water tests, for which we’re further developing the navigation & control algorithms. The software team has worked hard to make sure we don’t rely on ROS (Robot Operating System) anymore, which got increasingly frustrating to work with (around). We also acquired a DVL (Doppler Velocity Log) sensor which enables the robot to keep track of its x y position.

Planning

For the last few weeks, we’ve been working on getting our planning on track. The current fulltime team will start their masters in September, so we want to make sure we can run a tight ship for the coming two years. As the team grows, internal and external communication becomes increasingly important to structure.

Camera

One of the subsystems we’ve been designing is a miniature deep-sea camera. It’s outfitted with a glorified webcam and a metal pressure housing. We’re going to test it in our pressure chamber soon, to see how well it handles the 600 bar it will encounter in the deep sea.