July 2011 Competition Blog

Day 1 – July 10 – Driving Team

Well, it’s been a great day overall…we got off to a great start, with me (Mike) picking up Lee and Meaghan at only a couple minutes after 5am. Then it was off to Chris’ place to pick him up. We were a little concerned when he wasn’t waiting for us at the door, but he appeared in short order. A quick trip to Millwoods to pick up Aassem, and when we left dreary Edmonton it was 6am on the nose. Once we were south of Calgary, the sun was shining brightly and spirits were high.

After a slight hiccup with me misunderstanding where I was to position our vehicle, and Aassem being interrogated, we were in the US, and on our way! We stopped briefly in Conrad, Montana to grab Subway and Meaghan took over the wheel for me so I could snooze in the back while Lee and Chris were giddily playing GameCube in the centre row.

We rolled into Idaho Falls, Idaho at 9pm on the dot, just as we planned. After checking in, unloading our bags from ‘RoboVan’ (the new nomenclature for our tricked-out ride) and tucking in SubmURSA in Meaghan’s room, we filled the van with gas and headed over to the Olive Garden for some free salad and breadsticks. (We are students, after all). After some spirited conversation, and a great dinner, we headed back to the hotel to check our e-mail and get ready for bed. All in all, a great first day!

~Mike

Day 2 – July 11 – Driving Team

Well, we got started a little later than planned. It seems someone (*cough*Chris*cough*) forgot to turn on the alarm clock, and we didn’t wake until I awoke to Meaghan knocking on our door at 5:30. We showered and dressed quickly, then loaded RoboVan and headed off to the hotel lobby for our complimentary breakfast (more free food! Seeing a pattern yet?) With only a minor incident involving Aassem and the waffle dispenser, our appitites were saited and our feared leader hearded us all into RoboVan, and we were on the highway by 7am sharp.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although the scenery was quite beautiful. We stopped for some gas and Arby’s in Beaver, Utah (the birthplace of Butch Cassidy, or so I’m told) and later crossed three states in 20 minutes. Meaghan was quite excited to see Las Vegas, so we took a slight detour down the Strip so she could bask in Sin City in all it’s (daytime) glory. I told her it’s much cooler at night.

We cruised into San Diego at around 10:30 local time, and got checked into our hotel rooms. Meaghan met up with her roommate from the University of Victoria team, and opted to call it a night, while us guys went cruising for a late-night supper at the local McDonalds. Long story short, we made it, and we can still stand the sight of each other. So far, so good!

~Mike

Day 3 – July 12 – Everyone Together at Last

So while the breakfast club (driving team) was having fun finding out just how much calories their bodies could take at the IHOP, Veselin, Kris and I awoke to the wee hours of daylight and took to the skies for San Diego. The flights were fine despite Kris complaining about the emergency exit seats that wouldn’t recline.

I’d like to mention that here at ARVP, we are always planning for the future, and although we have a new platform, we constantly search for inspirations for our new platform designs. As we came closer to landing at YVR, a heavenly light shone through the clouds and onto the Science World Store in the Airport and onto what is to become, our successor to SubmURSA.

A heavenly light drawing us to nirvana and inspiration

We were left speechless...Truly, the work of the gods.

Finally in San Diego, we met up with the rest of the gang and headed off to the orientation for the RoboSub event.  We also got to briefly meet some other teams; some, like the UVic team were close to home while others, like Reykjavik University were not exactly close to home.  After about an hour, the orientation ended and  we split off into two groups.  Meaghan would lead Lee, Kris, Veselin to gather supplies while Chris, Mike, Aassem and I would attend to SubmURSA’s to perform some more tests.  Since we were not yet allowed to use the hotel pool, we would use the next best thing, the bathtub!  After careful work in sealing the electronics hull and placing it underwater for a few minutes, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were no leaks!  Yay!

Chris at age 6, when rubber duckys were not good enough toys to play with during bathtime

Success!!!

So that’s it for now.  We’ve got further testing to do tomorrow at the TRANSDEC early morning.  Hopefully things will go well tomorrow.  In the meantime, work work work!

~Allen

Day 4 – July 13 – Let’s Rock and Roll

Day 4 has come and passed. What went on today? Well my friends, let’s turn the clock back now shall we? 12 am: everybody is working on a few adjustments. Chris, Veselin, Mike and Meaghan were working on getting our motorcontrollers to behave, while Aassem, Lee, Kris and I were fashioning up a new lid for SubmURSA. You may think that feeding that childhood desire to melt things would give us great satisfaction, but you’d be WRONG. We started making the lid at about 9 pm and finally ended at 1 am. The motorcontroller group weren’t having much luck.

Motorcontroller group hard at work

Lid group at work

Fast forward to early morning, we arrived at the TRANSDEC. Unfortunately, things took an interesting turn and the motorcontroller for our thrusters began to behave, while our newly made lid cracked. Fortunately, it wasn’t too big so it was patch-able with marine goop. We’ve also added some sealant on the lid to add some additional leaking protection, but the drying time proved much too testing to the patience. Fear not however, as we found a solution: use plumber’s putty! We haven’t been able to put SubmURSA into the water. Hopefully that is what tomorrow will bring. Looks like another long night to tweak things up a bit.

Lee, Kris and Aassem on some tweaks at TRANSDEC

~Allen

Day 5 – July 14 – Et tu, IMU?? (or: More Heartbreak…)

Well, it’s day 5 and it’s been a lot of highs and lows, mostly with us ending on a low note.

We arrived at the TRANSDEC bright and early and eagerly unloaded our equipment and set to work. We were trying to remain optimistic that today was the day we were going to get through that gate! Alas, SubmURSA had other ideas. A preliminary test of the plumber’s putty in the hotel pool the night before indicated that it should work in practice as long as we placed it on correctly. However, as we were sealing the lid for a test in the testing pool, we heard a sickening ‘pop’ as one of the draw latches tore it’s mount from the pressure hull. Undeterred, we substituted a C-clamp as a temporary fix and got it in the testing pool. This is where we discovered our second problem.

After adjusting the pump nozzles to push SubmURSA underwater, and statically balancing the hull (with more C-clamps, those things are handy…) we tried to have it submerge itself using the pumps. The pumps worked well enough, but the problem was that once we had it underwater and shut off the pumps, it was unable to return to the surface on it’s own. It was completely neutrally buoyant! We spent some time adding weights and floats in various permutations, discovering it was a very fine line between negative and positive buoyancy. As we were attempting to achieve the perfect balance, another of the draw latches broke loose (2500 psi shear strength my a**…)

Then (oh, joy) we discovered that the depth sensor and IMU were no longer working, in spite of them working fine the previous night. So now, SubmURSA had no idea how deep it was, or which way it was pointed. We would have to do our run blind as we had no usable external sensors. For regular readers, you would know that we have two USB cameras on the front of the vehicle that would allow us to see the gate, but it was decided that making the system more complicated at this point in the competition would not be in our best interests.

So we spent a few hours tweaking the pumps to get SubmURSA down to a fixed depth and traveling in a straight line. Needless to say, SubmURSA wasn’t co-operating very well. It was getting down to the last minute before our qualifying run. It was tense. I was in the testing pool with SubmURSA and Veselin was on the side furiously making adjustments to SubmURSA’s autonomous program. We could get SubmURSA to dive, but no matter how much we increased the left side thrust, it wouldn’t track straight. When we checked the pumps on the left side, I discovered that none of the left-side horizontal pumps were working anymore. Maybe it was a dead battery, maybe one of the motor controllers, but we didn’t have time to pop the lid to check. I made a valiant last-ditch effort to move the hose from the right front thrust nozzle, to the left front thrust nozzle (the beauty of our modular design) but it was too late…we missed our chance. However we did learn a few things, particularly that if we wanted to have SubmURSA surface on it’s own, we needed more buoyancy, which meant more downward thrust than the pumps could provide. This lead to the decision to use the thrusters for diving, entailing major modifications to the platform. But first, food.

So, back at the hotel, we re-epoxied the draw latch mounts on and headed out for dinner. After getting turned around a couple times, we finally made it there (in spite of 3 backseat drivers yelling different directions to Meaghan the driver). We ate and then returned to the hotel for a long night of work, with the hope that we could do a quick water test before bed.

Once there myself, Allen, Aassem, and Meaghan went to work to figure out how to add thrusters to the side of SubmURSA, as two thrusters would only require one motorcontroller versus two for the pumps. Chris went to work adding a start switch to the mainboard, and Lee and Kris went to bed. We figured out how to get the thrusters on (yay zipties!), but we did have to modify the thruster cable to get the required length. So, we set that up to dry overnight, Chris finished the start switch, and we decided to call it a night, scrubbing a pool run for the night, and hoping for a better day tomorrow. We WILL make it through the gate!

~ Mike

Day 6 – July 15 – The Day in Song

7 am waking up in the morning.
gotta be fresh gotta go downstairs.
can’t have a bowl – can’t have cereal
seein’ everyone they’re so tired

tick’in on and on everybody’s rushin’
gotta get down to the TRANSDEC
gotta catch the van, I see my “friends…”

Sleeping in the front seat, sleeping in the back seat
Don’t need to make my mind up
Which seat I should take…

It’s Friday, Friday another day for our robot
Everybody’s looking forward to get it working working
Friday Friday gettin’ down to business
Everybody’s getting together for the hours of
Debugging, debugging (ARGH!)
Debugging, debugging (GRRR!)
Not. Fun. Not. Fun.
Looking forward to qua-li-fying

7:45 eatin’ breakfast burritos
drinkin’ coffee fast we want time to be slow
curse, yell, where are the pumps?
who has the flat screwdriver?
You got it, No YOU got it
No it’s by your right, eh?
I got it, you don’t have it
Charge those batteries…

Kicking in the test pool
Sleeping in the team tent (Chris)
Gotta make my mind up
When do I pull the switch?

It’s Friday, Friday another day for our robot
Everybody’s looking forward to get it working working
Friday Friday gettin’ down to business
Everybody’s getting together for the hours of
Debugging, debugging (ARGH!)
Debugging, debugging (GRRR!)
@#$!. @#$!. @#$!. @#$!
Looking forward to qua-li-fying

Yesterday was Thursday (Thursday)
Today i-is Friday (Friday)
We we we so excited
We so excited
SubmURSA swam through the gate!

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Finals comes after-wards
We want to go get some sleep….

#include<electronics_rap.h>

It’s Friday, Friday another day for our robot
We finally got it to be working working
Friday Friday givin’ high fives to teammates
Everybody’s looking forward to be sleeping
Partying? Partying?(Nope)
Debugging? debugging? (lolz)
Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!
Fi-na-lly we had qualified!

~Allen

Day 8 – July 17 – Wrapping Up

Well, here we are. The past week has been a lot of fun, but all good things must come to an end. Although we didn’t do as well as we hoped (thanks to numerous failures on our components) we still managed to score a weight bonus and we did qualify once! I’m sure we will score some more points considering our t-shirts were “the best in the competition” according to some of the guys running the show.

8 teams made it into the finals. As of Friday, Cornell made it to first place, University of Florida came second and Université de Québec (École de Téchnoligie Supérieure) came in third place. Reykjavík University clinched the last spot in the finals – great news considering their sub flooded in the first day of the competition! The finalists are currently running the course and we’ll find out who gets to take the 20000$ prize.

What about us? Well, there’s a lot of things we can take away from this. We’ve made some good friends in other schools, sharpened our troubleshooting skills, networked with people (you know, we might get sick of hearing about networking in and out of school but it’s really true – knowing the right people can really give you a jump start). We’ve managed to create a sponsorship package which GOT us several sponsorships! We’ve done so much more with community outreach and we’ve learned the ropes with our new platform SubmURSA. We also can’t forget the much shinier website (thanks to Lily!) released this year.

5 nights of staying up until 2-3 am, hours and hours of frustration, a diet comprised of burgers and dennys, sunburns, cold dips in the pools, chats with the good folks at UVic, UC Irvine, Montana State and U South California (not to mention much needed help from Kyushu Institute of Technology), we can say that Robosub 14 was a success.

Now let’s win this thing next year.

~Allen