2010 Competition Season

June, 2010

We are now in full swing getting Seawolf III ready for the 2010 competition coming up in July. Since NCSU has drained their diving well over the summer, pool tests are currently taking place at a team member's house while we locate a new temporary testing facility.

2008-2009 Highlights

October, 2009

We are currently laying out a work schedule for the 2009-2010 school year. We will continue to use Seawolf III for the 2010 AUVSI competition. Power, vision and acoustics are the main focus for improvement.

August-September, 2009

Fall semester is in session! We've kicked off the new semester with a couple of "meet and greet" sessions to introduce new members and re-organize after the competition. In the next couple of weeks, we will resume our regular meetings.

AUVSI's 12th Annual AUV competition
We placed 16th among 30 competitors in AUVSI's 2009 competition- Congratulations to the team for their hard work and dedication. We would also like to thank our sponsors for their generous support and look forward to another great year.

AUVSI Student Pavilion in Washington, DC (Aug. 10th-13th)
Road Trip! Several members attended AUVSI's Student Pavilion in Washington DC following the competition.

Week of June 21- June 27
Acoustics: Alot of good news to share- The new acoustics system is almost complete! The blackfin/FPGA are now communicating with eachother, and the signal processing algorithms have been tested. We do have triangulation code at the moment, but it is untested (still waiting on thrusters to return from factory).

Vision: Still needs further testing, but is coming along well (see results from last pool test). All of the props were painted this week.

Hull: We swapped all of the remaining zinc-plated hardware on the hull with stainless steel. The new camera boxes are now completed- and new cables assembled.

Electronics: We are in the process of installing the new thruster controller board. Click here for more details!

Week of June 14- June 20
June 17th pool test details posted (pictures posted)

This week, we sent out a few boards to the boadhouse (H-bridge carrier board, Arduino clones ). The vision team has made fantastic progress- We tested some of their new code at last Wednesday's pool test. We also received our FISCHER CONNECTORS! Fischer really came through for us and provided a very generous discount. It has been a pleasure working with their staff.

-The dropper unit and all three camera boxes have been assembled.

-A backup netbook was ordered this week, along with an extended-life battery.

Thruster Update: One of our thrusters failed during last week's pool test. Upon disassembly, we discovered that two of our thrusters have sustained damage from water leaking. They are currently out for repair at Seabotix. We have heard back from Seabotix, and expect the repaired thrusters to arrive by the end of next week. Until then, we can still continue testing, but with a modified thruster configuration.

Week of May 31- June 6
Progress is underway on the replacement H-bridge carrier board, power distribution board, vision and acoustics. We also conducted two pool tests over the weekend, and discovered that two of our thrusters succumbed to minor damage from water leaks. However, we are glad to have caught the issue now rather than later. The thrusters should be repaired and returned by the end of the week!

For more information on these systems, click here. For details on last weekend's pool test, click here!

Week of May 17-23
The summer is treating us well- We were planning to have a pool test this week, but there was a scheduling issue.

Update: Our new camera boxes and dropper unit have been assembled! Checkout the detail here.

April 24th, 2009
The Underwater Robotics Club is featured in NC State's Engineering Magazine
See the full article here

Week of April 20-26
This week is the last week of classes. We will not be holding any official meetings, but any progress made will be posted.

April 18, 2009 - Third Pool Test

Our Third pool test was not very exciting- A software issue prevented us from communicating to the embedded controllers, thus we were not able to dunk Seawolf. The issue was found, but by the time it was remedied our time slot at the pool was up. It certainly reminded us how important keeping our SVN up to date with every software change.

Week of April 13-19

This week marks the second to last week of classes, therefore we will not be holding formal meetings. The lab is in keep-clean status and is now a study lab...

Fortunately, some of our members still have free time to dedicate to the club... How thats possible remains a mystery :) All jokes aside, we have made some significant progress. Brooks (president, head of vision) and his team have compiled code that recognizes the PVC gate. That means we finished building a gate, too.

Kevin is currently producing a power board as a permanent installation. Until then, our wiring is getting a "de-spaghettification" treatment to prevent any damage to hardware. The power board will serve power to the laptop, the embedded controllers and all sensors onboard. Additionally, it will monitor voltage and integrate with Byron's magnetic mission start switch.

Furthermore, we have the depth sensor transponder up and running, and will be developing code for it. It will run alongside the depth pressure sensor we are currently using. Both have benefits and tradeoffs, yet both give the craft depth perception.

April 5, 2009 - Second Pool Test

Today marks another successful run for Seawolf III- Checkout the link below for more details!
Click here for more information about this event

April 4, 2009 - Pre-Test Update

Tonight we prepared for our second pool test. Byron continued to work on the H-bridge backplane, and worked with Kevin to complete connector assembly. Replacement H-bridges arrived (special thanks to Dave for expediting them!) and Chris (who has surprisingly good solder skills for a CS major...) worked on replacing the damaged units. Kevin completed the makeshift netbook power supply. About half of the team attended until 4 AM- what a group!

April 1, 2009 - Weekly Meeting Update

During today's meeting, we finished the thruster cable connectors and conducted a machine vision lecture. Brooks Stephenson is currently heading the vision project, and new member Michael Brown (Computer Engineering) will assist him. Kevin put together a regulator circuit to power the netbook from the main battery stack for this weekend's pool test. Byron and Kevin also worked on completing the remaining fischer connectors. Dave gave us a rundown on this summer's trip to SD... New camera boxes are in the works as well (Dave and Tim).

March 28, 2009 - First Pool Test

Today we conducted our first pool test for Seawolf III. We ran the craft for a total of 3 hours before the netbook battery died. Our goal was to debug the depth PID code and sensor. The depth sensor unit was feeding us incorrect data, but the data was proportional to the depth. Last minute code changes were made to fix the issue. The PID code seemed to work well- It needed a few minor adjustments. Overall, the entire club came out (despite tornado warnings in the area!) and the entire test went very well.

Click here for more information about this event

 

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