We were delayed in getting to the pool by two hours due to the time needed to wire the bottom camera and resolve other electrical issues. We only had about 45 minutes at the pool.
We tested recent changes to controls and task planning. We resolved some bugs related to tf2 in task planning, but other bugs persisted, so we switched to the old task planning system. We also resolved some bugs related to recent controls changes. Due to the limited time, we had only a few chances to move the robot; we needed more time at the pool to fix controls. We also didn’t have enough time to get path marker images; we’ll do that next week.
This was also the first pool test in which we used the SONR underwater radio communication system, which allowed us to easily communicate with the swimmer, even whilst underwater and at the far end of the pool.
Positives
- Using velocity from state as the derivative for PID control resulted in control efforts being very smooth and stable
- Additional PID diagnostic information published by controls provided useful insights into the robot’s behavior
- We can connect to the bottom camera and receive its live feed
- We did not have a pressure arduino hangup
- SONR Pro underwater radio communication system made communication with the swimmer much easier
Issues
- Task planning contains bugs related to tf2; poses weren’t being transformed correctly causing large changes in the robot’s roll setpoint
- New controls parameters need to be configured to their optimum values
- DVL publishes in “bursts” – a few messages get published in rapid succession, then there is a brief pause for about half a second, then repeat
- One hydrophone mount is broken (from Saturday’s pool test)
- Bottom front right thruster cover is broken
- Top back right thruster cover gets dirty in the pool due to excess wood glue
- Need to take large ethernet switch and additional ethernet cables to the pool to allow more laptops to connect to the robot