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. …
Today’s pool test marked several major milestones. This was the first time that our new minibot, named Crush, was submerged in the pool. This was also the first time that we tested the torpedo launcher in the pool. And it was also the first time that all code migrated to ROS2 was tested together, in …
Today, we tested the new offboard comms pyserial method for communicating with the thrusters, alongside using two arduinos on the robot instead of the original three. After some trial and error, we had to revert to an earlier commit of the code where the start flag for serial communication is a single byte (0xFF), instead …
Today, in our last pool test of the summer, we completed the gate and buoy tasks in one continuous run. We started with the gate task: submerge, correct yaw for the coin flip, move through the gate, and finally barrel roll. We put the gate in the water in the opposite direction from our previous …
Today we resolved the thruster issue and made more progress towards the gate task. Max and I recently improved our detection rate on the DepthAI camera with color correction to 17Hz and also reduced the latency. This was the result of two optimizations At the pool, we first tested our gate model on the DepthAI …
Today we ran into several issues with the thrusters. Over the last few days, Lilly and I swapped the thruster Arduino from a Nano Every to a Nano with the hope that it would fix the disconnect issues we’ve been having. We also swapped the bottom mono camera for a new one. We had to …
We made more progress towards the gate task. Moving Towards the Gate While the robot is able to move towards the gate in most cases, sometimes, the robot would move too far in the Y direction when it first started moving. Its goal would be to align itself with the red image, but it would …
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