The competition webcast can be found here or on the AUVSI competition main page. Webcast will be available Sunday, July 18 (today) 1:00-5:00pm pacific time.

Today the team focused on improving Tachyon’s torpedo firing abilities. We spent a lot of time in the dolphin pool making changes to the fire time of the torpedoes and the depth at which they are pushed into the launcher tube.

In our first practice run, Tachyon managed to complete the validation gate, pipe, hedge and buoy missions. Tachyon fired the torpedo into the yellow window instead of the blue, and failed to pick up the counselor. In the second practice, Tachyon completed all the tasks perfectly including the torpedo fire, but failed to drop the counselor at the end of mission. Our qualification run had similar results to our practices: gate, one buoy, fired torpedo but missed targeted window, bins, hedge, recovered counselor but did not release.

We placed first in the qualification rounds (all team’s results in previous post) allowing us first pick in tomorrow time slots –practice 11:00pm, finals 4:15pm.

Our goal for tomorrow is the same as always: to run the course.

Today was an eventful day at the competition. We had two practice runs and our first qualifying run. After a few false starts, we were able to run buoy, pipe, hedge, windows (got 1 torpedo through an incorrect window due to a actuator issue), hydrophone to to recovery zone, pick up the recover object, surface, and release the object. We also gave our static judging presentation, and placed first in static judging. Tonight, after going out to a sit-down mexican dinner to celebrate, we are working on our pneumatic system to hopefully increase reliability for firing torpedoes. Tomorrow we are hoping to be able to run the course.

Today we continued to tackle Tachyon’s vision issues with the sun’s glare. We tried numerous solutions including making a camera lens shroud and switching out our Firewire Guppy camera for a webcam. Ultimately we determined the Firewire Guppy camera was still advantageous and our software team resolved our vision problems through coding. During our last practice slot of the day, we ran an autonomous run, which included going through the validation gate and hedge, hitting the orange buoy, sensing the pinger, and recovering and surfacing with the counselor.
Tonight we are working on continuing to tune the bin and buoy code, and work on our active grabber. Tomorrow we will test the modified vision code in practice. Our static judging time is at 3:00pm, and our qualifying run is at 5:00pm.

Above: The camera lens shroud; The team attaching the counselor grabber

Today, the software team completed the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) student interoperability challenge. This is the first year JAUS is contributing to the AUVSI competition scoring system. JAUS is the premier interoperability standard for unmanned systems, used in a variety of commercial and industrial applications worldwide. The interoperability Challenge for 2010 required CUAUV to interact with a control and monitoring system using these industry standard protocols.

Above: Team with Wes Brown, a student challenge judge from the Unmanned Systems and Robotics Interoperability Center (USARIC).

Today was our first day out at Transdec. We have been using our practice slots to acquire imagery and tune our vision systems. We have also been testing our hydrophones, which are working very well. We've had two practice slots so far and are scheduled for a third later today. Be sure to check out our Competition 2010 image gallery and follow our twitter feed for more up-to-date coverage of our time in San Diego.

Half of the CUAUV group arrived in San Diego yesterday evening, the second half is following today. All of our packages arrived via FedEx, and we got everything through security without it getting broken by TSA. This morning we will be reassembling Tachyon and testing to see if it is still working.

Tachyon (and a lot of our equipment) is packed up and in the hands of FedEx. We hope to have it reassembled and working again at the hotel on Tuesday morning.

Yesterday CUAUV conducted its final pool test with Tachyon prior to shipping to San Diego. The pool test was highly successful: Tachyon completed the course untethered autonomous several times, including launching torpedoes, dropping markers in the correct bins, picking up and dropping the recovery object. Video of one of these runs:

Thanks to Kevin Markwardt and the Ithaca Swim Club for letting us take pictures of the mission elements in their pool! From 8-9am this morning, we got to test our vision algorithms in bright sunlight in preparation for TRANSDEC. All of them work well with only a little extra tuning.

Also, the active grabber went on Tachyon for last night's pool test. After removing a few teeth that were causing it to grab too well, it picked up and dropped successfully several times in a mission. We will continue to work with it to improve reliability in both grabbing and releasing today and tomorrow. Two pool tests left before Tachyon ships!