Project update June 2021

Testing

Over the past couple of months, we have tested with our robot many times. Simulations tests, pool tests, and last week, our first outdoors test! We have moved on from mostly hardware bugs to mostly software bugs, which is a great thing. Our technology as well as the team has matured so much in the process, and we’re looking forward to implementing the learnings as soon as the exam week has passed. Here’s a teaser: (more will follow on Linkedin soon)

Partners

We have been working hard on building a network of partners that can help transform our technology development into some sort of business. Windfarm operators, inspection companies, end users; they are all excited with our proposition and we have identified many interesting usecases. This also helps to give us more direction in the development.

Nerd stuff

We documented a couple of our pool tests which were aimed to verify that the attitude control of the robot works properly. A bit of background: a neutrally buoyant object underwater has 6 degrees of freedom, and, assuming no passive roll stability, this means that we have to control them all! Especially attitude control gets tricky because of the limitations that Euler angles have, so you have to use quaternion math, which isn’t exactly intuitive. We demonstrated a successive dive-pitch-yaw-roll maneuver.

Team

At 18 team members, LOBSTER has never been this big before. We are actively working on our leadership & coaching skills because we still need more people! Specifically front-end developers, software engineers, embedded engineers and electrical engineers. We are also looking for interns in Business Development and marketing. We can use your network! Do you know someone who might know someone? Please connect us with them!