Welcome back to the spring semester! I will be taking over the leadership of pool tests from Nathanael Ren, who is currently abroad for the semester. Due to Crush needing work with buoyancy blocks, we decided to start by just testing Oogway. We originally had also hoped to get some acoustics data at the pool; …
Thank you for joining me on this Sunday edition of the pool test update! We were extremely happy to have our team president Saagar “Big Saag” Arya and the rest of his team join us with acoustics, and new CS members join us with sonar! I will not even comment on the arrival since we …
My b gang, caught pretty much Ebola, had to skip last week. But ts gone now, and I’m sure y’all missed me greatly. Anyways, we are so back! This week’s pool test went decently. Pre-Pool Test We made it to the pool test at pretty much 2pm exactly. Oogway was pretty much ready to go …
Today’s pool test was hopefully the last pool test focused largely on cleaning up functionality before we start testing new code. Overall, it went very smoothly. Small Testing Items Today we spent the first 30 minutes of the pool test working on getting joystick controls running to let some new members drive the robot. We …
Officially past the halfway point of the fall semester, we’re finally starting to get into the groove of things. Today’s pool test went quite smoothly despite some hiccups at the start. Please also see the ode of appreciation for today. Gross Hall Issues Back in the lab, before we started pool testing, we had some …
After 5 weeks out of service, we were ecstatic to get back into the pool. Thankfully, it was not 6-7 weeks — that would have caused major timeline delays. Goals Our goals for this week’s pool test was to calibrate Oogway’s Gyro after returning from California, collect sonar data, and demo the robot. Setup and …
Ah, the first pool test of the year. In September this time! Vedarsh would be proud. Workflow Problems It’s almost never smooth, but this time we wasted quite a bit of time getting setup that we must eliminate in the future. Here’s an analysis of our timeline: 1:15pm: We begin moving everything over to the …
These two pool tests are our final set of tests for the summer! We wrapped up our testing and had some fun moving the robot in various directions. 07/19/2025 From our previous observations, we theorized that our earlier problems with x-direction movement were due to the concentration of buoyancy blocks in the middle of the …
For this set of pool tests, we dealt with some of the lingering effects of last week’s pool tests, which unfortunately hindered our progress. However, we continue to push forward this summer. 07/05/2025 When we arrived at the pool, we quickly ran into an issue. At the lab, we tested Crush with a battery as …
Sometimes (or quite often), plans quickly fall through, requiring a quick pivot to best make use of time. This weekend served as a prime example of this concept, leading to some frustrating but interesting situations. 06/28/2025 We started by working to re-tune our static power as detailed in the previous pool test update, but quickly …
After a short break, we have resumed pool testing with the summer pool test crew! Throughout the summer, we plan to test on Saturdays and Sundays leading up to the competition. We will be focusing on getting much-needed testing in for Crush and preparing other items before August. 06/07/2025 First day back to summer pool …
04/12/2025 Oogway: After several weeks of frustrating issues with state, Denton finally fixed the issue by resetting the pose0_differential and odom0_differential fields in Oogway’s oogway.yaml config file in sensor_fusion to true, which reverts them to their original settings. Combined with the earlier fix to the DVL coordinate frame, these changes restored proper state behavior. To …
Last weekend marks a major milestone for the team. Crush, our mini-robot, officially entered the water with all its electrical systems and software fully mounted! This achievement reflects a year’s worth of collaboration, persistence, and innovation across all subteams. With Crush finally in the water, we can now begin testing its full capabilities, including performing …
This was a relatively short pool test focused on resolving the DVL issues we encountered during the previous pool test. Specifically, we suspected that the DVL’s X and Y axes were swapped, leading to incorrect state data. Before heading to the pool, Denton and I attempted to fix this by modifying the DVL settings via …
“This was a forgettable pool test.” – Sid Kini We started this pool test with high hopes, as the robot was working normally on land and we got to the pool test on time. Our first goal was to tune the robot’s buoyancy. A few of the buoyancy shafts were filled to the top with …
Today, we tested the fiber optic gyroscope for the second time in the pool. Gyro Testing Sonar Testing We tested sonar and were able to get scans of the back pool wall. To start using the sonar in task-planning (e.g., in the octagon task), a sonar task-planning interface must be made. Additionally, it would be …
Today we tested the fiber optic gyroscope for the first time in the pool. Gyro Integration The gyro requires a 1000Hz square wave as a trigger signal, and communicates using the RS-422 standard. Denton and I wrote Python code to send the trigger signal and parse the received data. The data was publishing at 800-900 …
OOGWAY PRE-QUALIFICATION COMPLETE! Oogway Pre-Qualification We changed the pre-qualification code to make it more reliable and take less time. We also tried making the robot move in 2 meter increments instead of 1 meter when tracking the lane marker, but this led to the robot quickly going off course, so we reverted to 1 meter …
Today, our primary focus was on completing the pre-qualification with Oogway. We also tested torpedoes and the minibot. Battery Cable Before the pool test, a few electrical and mechanical members removed excess epoxy off of the battery cable and clamped the copper part down with pliers, as it was loose. The cable worked for the …
We first adjusted Oogway’s buoyancy. With the two large buoyancy blocks attached behind the torpedo launcher, along with adjustments made in the pool, we were able to make Oogway’s buoyancy level. In this process, we noticed that the spacers for the buoyancy shafts are too small and need to be reprinted with a larger diameter. …
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