We Need a Bigger Boat

Pulling a 1000lb vehicle with an inflatable boat is difficult...


And in the middle of a shipping lane, it's a nail-biting experience.

Back On Track

With a fixed thruster arm, we are back to tuning up the control system. Testing went well, but there was an extremely tense moment when the vehicle started turning in circles when it should have been moving in a straight line...

We thought we had lost a thruster again.


Fortunately, it turned out to be some seaweed that had been floating on the surface, which got tangled in the thruster and severely reduced its efficiency.

First Day of Field Operations 2009

Today was our first day in the water after installing the new flotation sphere (and a few other components) into the vehicle. The goal for the day was to properly trim the vehicle -- get its weight and buoyancy evenly distributed fore and aft, port and starboard. Our secondary goal was to get comfortable with the process of deploying: loading and unloading the truck, bringing the appropriate equipment, and so on.

In this picture, we've just finished unloading Odyssey IV from the back of the rented box truck (using the lift gate) and are assembling it next to the pier.


The Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center is a great place for us to test, because of their easily-accessible crane that is poised over water deep enough to hold the vehicle.


Only the height of the hook is controlled, so we have to use a lot of ropes to keep the arm of the crane pointed in the right direction and the vehicle from spinning.


After a few trips into and out of the water, we got the right mix of weight and buoyancy in the front and back. Time to haul it out of the water one last time and put all the buoyancy in the inside. The sun even came out!


We put the vehicle on a tether and did some joystick-controlled thruster tests. Manual control for this vehicle is done on the equivalent of a USB Playstation controller, although the available commands don't translate perfectly to the analog joysticks on it.


The thrusters are powerful enough to make visible effects on the surface of the water, and to tow the Boston Whaler that we were using as a chase boat.

Finding a Test Site

Today we checked out the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center as a possible place to do basic vehicle testing. After talking with the nice folks who work there (as well as the Harbormaster and Coast Guard), we are all set to go next week! There is plenty of room on the pier for us to set up a tent with all of our stuff.




There is also a good crane for lifting the AUV in and out of the water.




The pier is fairly long, and although we won't be doing much work in this narrow patch of water, it's a convenient place to trim and do basic tests before we turn it loose in a larger area.