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Research Operations
A calm day, which is always cool
March 11, 2010 — via I-COOL
The glider is making good progress towards it’s inland waypoint. We have shut down one of the EcoPucks, the goal here is to conserve power and try make sure we have plenty of power to loiter for recovery. We shut down the one puck that was only measuring backscatter (a optical proxy for particle type [...]
RU22 makes it turn!
March 9, 2010 — via I-COOL
RU22 makes great progress, it has hit the offshore way-point and now is heading inshore. The progress looks good. Gaps in the HF radar do not provide the currents at the specific glider position, but overall despite some spatial heterogeneity the currents look low and not very strong. The satellite imagery has been nice given the [...]
Good progress over the weekend!
March 7, 2010 — via I-COOL
RU22 continues its effective steam across the shelf. The glider makes good progress to the way-point to the south, and is being supported by shelf-wide circulation which is to the south as seen in the CODAR imargey. The glider should reach the shelf edge by the beginning of the week. This is positive given the [...]
late so a quick data update before a fishery glider discussion blog tomorrow
March 5, 2010 — via I-COOL
It has been a long, but great day with a big celebration of RU27 . Two elementary schools, 4 deans, and 1 University President, ~40 undergrads, all wanting to geek for oceanography. A good day, but we have glider flying tonight, so how does it fair? The glider is heading cross shore and slightly south. It [...]
MARCOOS 2010, Year of the Fish!
March 3, 2010 — via I-COOL
The first MarCOOS glider is deployed for the 2010 field season. We have deployed ru22 and we will begin a month long journey heading down south to our most excellent partners. We will add a second glider in the next few weeks to give us a northern view of the Mid-Atlantic shelf. Both efforts are [...]
RU27 Celebration- Complete Atlantic Ocean Survey Proposal
March 3, 2010 — via I-COOL
For our next project we plan to send gliders around the whole Atlantic Ocean and even around the world! Here are some screenshots of our potential glider paths (yellow) along with the currents we are going to ride (red)… We will travel around the ACC and therefore around the world! Another glider will sail the South Atlantic Gyre [...]
Pool Test 2-21
March 1, 2010 — via VT AUVT
Last Sunday, AUVT had our first Pool Test of the semester. The main issue to test was checking that the new end-cap connection is water-proof. We put the AUV in the water first without the e-rack, and sunk it to the bottom with a weight placed on it so that we could see that it [...]
Scylla, scourge of the deep!!!
February 24, 2010 — via I-COOL
The Legendary Scylla I first heard of Scylla in my senior year of high school, and if it wasn’t my first time hearing it, it was certainly my most recognizable memory of Scylla. Being a part of our theatre production of Mary Zimmerman’s: The Odyssey, I was one of the sailors who survived [...]
1 Line - 3 Economies
February 24, 2010 — via I-COOL
26.5 N passes through Florida, the Bahamas, and Central Africa, all with very different economies… Economy in Florida The Gulf Stream exerted a tremendous influence on the colonization of North America Most all colonization from Virginia to the south chose the southern route across the Atlantic even though it was 2,000-3,000 miles farther due to the [...]
3 Photos Plus Captions
February 24, 2010 — via I-COOL
Hey Everyone!! Here are three photos that Nick E. and I think would work well in the compliation of photos that we as a class are putting together for the slide show. Image of 27 just before she begins her journey of retreival. Not only was 27 the first transatlantic glider, she was also a high tech sampling [...]
Equator: Economy and Society
February 24, 2010 — via I-COOL
The equator intersects the South American coast on Mexiana Island, a private island located in the mouth of the Amazon River. It is one of the oldest fishing sites in Pará, with an area of 247,105.38 acres. The island is home to many species of fish, and draws in many fresh water sports fishermen from around the [...]
In-Water Testing!
February 18, 2010 — via VT AUVT
We have our first underwater test of the semester coming up THIS SUNDAY at WMP! We will have the AUV in the water from 4-5:30PM, testing the new end-cap seals and the new lateral thruster! Stay tuned for updates!
After the Competition
February 3, 2010 — via Naval Academy Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Team
Fall 2009 in Review
December 7, 2009 — via VT AUVT
I know this blog has been very quiet this semester, but we actually have been working diligently on improving and rebuilding our AUV. As we near the end of the semester (and the deadline for all of our projects) the atmosphere in the lab is very busy, almost frantic. All of the teams here are [...]
Midterm Report
October 23, 2009 — via VT AUVT
Since our last update we have once again entered the long, chaotic period we like to call the academic semester. At the beginning of the semester we had a successful recruiting drive, and expanded the team to 17 members! With almost three times as many people working hard on the AUV, we are making good [...]
GSA 2009 Portland Oregon
October 19, 2009 — via The Life Autonomous: An Intern's Story
GSA 2009 is taking place in Portland, Oregon this week, and I have been lucky enough to attend. Some very useful talks have been in the session "From Virtual Globes to Geoblogs: Digital Innovations in Geoscience Research, Education, and Outreach." Presiding at the meeting: Peter Selkin, Glenn Richard, John Bailey, Kyle House, Ronald Schott, and Mano Marks.
The Search for Didemnum: Day 5 (Now THAT'S More Like It)
October 15, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
We got off to a great
start!
Clear water, proper bottom type, and great lighting. Today is a day
to find didemnum!
With the vehicle fully
functional after the previous day's repairs, Seth and Mike began
fishing in earnest.
We're no experts on
identifying tunicates, but we had no problem finding spectacular
examples of sea life amongst the volumes of images that Odyssey
brought back.
This is a sunflower sea star.
A skate...
A flounder, doing a
good job of blending in...
A tiny solaster
(literally, a sun star)...
After taking a few
thousand pictures, we decided to seek out more rocky bottomed
waters by moving further east.
Our recovery was complicated by the rocking of the boat, but as a
team we are getting used to handling the swinging vehicle.
(There were also some
good pictures of the water column!)
Our second deployment
went very smoothly.
Unfortunately, the
water was far more turbid in our second area of operation. Sponges,
anemones, and redfish dominated the images.
The sponges look like
potatoes in these images.
Although beautiful to
look at, anemones are not what we are after.
As the light faded, we
made our last recovery for the week and prepared to head
back.
We had pictures of too
many starfish to count, in all shapes and sizes.
This one was hanging
out inside a mussel shell. I can't tell if it's eating or just
resting.
There were also quite
a few crabs, hermit crabs, and sunflower sea stars.
Divide and Conquer
October 14, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
While Mike performed a
miraculous teardown and rebuild of the vehicle on the deck of the
Isabella & Ava,
Seth, Kyle, and I
travelled back to Cambridge to put new oil into the thruster that
had spent some time at the
bottom of Gloucester harbor.
We met back up late that night.
The Search for Didemnum: Day 4 (One Good Mission, and Downhill From There)
October 14, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
Today we were
accompanied by Rachel from the Northeast
Consortium (NEC), the organization responsible for funding this
trip.
We decided to survey near the outflow pipe from Boston because we
figured that it would be warmer and more likely to sustain
didemnum.
Deployment was rough. We immediately lost the vehicle behind the
stern and had it pop up near the starboard bow. That can't be
good.
However, everything
seemed to have survived intact, so we started our day of testing.
After a few false starts, we ran a survey mission to see if the
warmer water from the outflow pipe would make a difference in our
images.
It did...
Whether from the pipe
or from the gale force winds during the previous night,
...the turbidity in
the water made for terrible image quality.
This lobster trap was
one of the few recognizable objects in all our photos.
Seth had no luck
finding any fish, and the sea state didn't help.
Jellyfish, on the
other hand were found in abundance
throughout
the
water
column.
So
many
jellies!
We decided to haul up
the vehicle to try another location. It was especially difficult
with the waves being higher than they were yesterday.
Odyssey swung quite a bit while we guided it to its cradle.
That's when things got worse.
"We're all done, guys" said Seth.
"What?"
Besides the fact that
the titanium thruster guard had been hit hard enough to crack one
of its welds,
and the fact that the
fiberglass CTD shroud had taken a beating,
it was the broken-off
oil filling port in the thruster that got our attention.
We had been oeprating with slowly-leaking oil all day! Worse, we
had no way to refill and re-close the hole; the show was
over.
You can see the red
paint that scraped off the bottom of the boat and onto our
thruster.
There was no choice but to end the day early and attempt to do some
emergency repairs.
Back to the lab!
On the way back to
shore, John caught a bird that had found its way into the
wheelhouse (miles from shore) and turned it loose outside.
Battery Recharge
October 14, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
Our battery continues
to have a much tighter difference between its max and min cell
voltages than we did before we replaced supercell #10.
This is what a healthy battery looks like.
The Search for Didemnum: Day 3 (Survey Patterns and Pictures)
October 13, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
Today we worked on our
survey pattern behavior. We seem to have some troubles when heading
due south.
Aside from that, the
surveys look pretty good.
The images we are
getting at 2m altitude are a little too pale. You can make out a
scallop in this image, but not a lot of red channel is coming
through.
We will have to fly lower to get good quality.
At 1.4 meters
altitude, things are considerably better!
A crab.
A sea star.
A lobster.
A sunflower sea star,
a sculpin, and a "regular" sea star.
We prepared to make
the day's first recovery. Working as a team makes what would be an
awkward (and somewhat hazardous) process go quite smoothly.
John (the first mate)
is very good at coordinating the recovery process.
As the seas get
rougher (from 25 kt gusts), deployment gets more "interesting". We
try extra-hard to get the vehicle far from the boat before we let
it go.
After putting Odyssey
back in the water, we weren't able to accomplish much. There were
some transient control issues in our way.
We did get a good sense of our minimum turning radius (at cruising
speed) when we tried to hold a position.
All in all, we
confirmed that the camera system is working reliably that our
survey patterns actually look like survey patterns (even if dead
reckoning is still a little behind).
Every trip to the
surface has pictures filled with these jellyfish.
Ready to Re-deploy
October 9, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
With the RTU overhaul
complete, we are ready to get back to hunting Didemnum.
RTU Stress Testing (again)
October 8, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
We did some more stress tests on the RTU after re-tightening the
bolts.
Another RTU Overhaul
October 7, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
Back at the lab, the
RTU
had to be removed so that we could service it.
After draining the oil
and opening the housing, it was clear that some of the bolts
holding the stator had worked themselves loose again. This is a
known issue, caused by a shortcoming in the design of the
RTU.
For now, the only thing we can do is re-tighten the bolts and
re-assemble the unit.
The Search for Didemnum: Day 2 (Double Success, Double Failure)
October 6, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
On our second day out,
we went a few miles further offshore to try some surveys in roughly
100 feet of water. From this far out, we could see the Boston
skyline relatively clearly.
The day's first
deployment went smoothly.
The goals for our second day out were to find out what altitude is
best for taking pictures, and to see if Justin's changes to the
survey behavior could help straighten out the tracklines when the
vehicle is at depth.
In this test, we
stepped through altitudes from 1.8 meters to 1.1 meters in
increments of 10 centimeters. The results are exactly what we had
hoped for: consistently good images, and a better idea of what
range of altitudes will produce them.
Notice the difference in the amount of red channel as the vehicle
approaches the bottom. To get good information from red light, we
have to fly very close to the bottom. A difference of a few tens of
centimeters makes a big difference in light quality!
We also had one flash misfire, the cause of which is unknown.
Overall, this set of images is a huge success; we can start doing
image surveys in earnest now that we know the physical focus and
aperture settings are in the right place.
The new survey
behavior also worked well... mostly. The tracklines are much
straighter, but what happened at the 4th corner?
Before we could wonder too much, Justin noticed that the vehicle
was running in circles under remote control and had a problem with
rolling over.
Uh oh.
Mike and Seth sprang
into action to check it out.
Both thruster cables
were still attached. So, we decided that recovering Odyssey would
be the only way to fully determine the cause of the problem. Kyle
got to try his hand at recovery.
Once the vehicle was
on deck, the problem was fairly evident. We had lost one of the
ninja pins that holds the thruster in proper orientation on the
RTU
shaft, and the thruster had worked its way to the opposite
direction.
Only 3/4" of the thruster was still within the coupling. Had it
worked its way fully loose, we would have lost it
permanently!
Unfortunately, there was a second problem as well: the RTU had
fallen out of alignment, and was unable to produce adequate torque
on the shaft to properly position the thrusters. This is a game
ender; we have to take the RTU back to the lab for
disassembly.
Catching a dogfish
lifted our spirits somewhat. We threw it back.
On the steam back to
the harbor, I was able to put together a small mosaic of a few good
images using the hugin
panorama stitcher (not to be confused with the
Hugin AUV).
When the RTU is fixed, we should be in very good shape to get more
like this!
The Proof: We Actually Did Fix The Battery
October 6, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
It looks like despite
the battery
problems we had last week, our battery is healthy and doesn't
have the
one divergent supercell that we noticed during UNH
testing.
You can also see the point at which we returned from dinner to find
that the power supply had switched off.
The Search for Didemnum: Day 1
October 5, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
Today we started our
hunt for the invasive species Didemnum
Vexillum. Our equipment was packed and ready to go
We left at 7am to beat
the traffic on our way to Scituate.
Once we arrived, we
spent the next 2 hours moving our stuff onto the F/V Isabella & Ava
and getting it stowed properly.
The boat's crane was
big enough (and the tide was high enough) to lift Odyssey
IV out of the pickup truck and place it safely on deck.
REx II came
too.
Mike, Seth, and Andrew
re-assembled the vehicle: fins, thrusters, and thruster
guards.
I pieced together the
quick-release and recovery pole with appropriate hardware to attach
to the boat's crane.
And away we go!
We didn't take any
chances on our first deployment; we used the zodiac to pull the AUV
away from the side of the boat. Better to err on the side of
caution! Our first set of missions was now under way.
The first few dive
missions were very disappointing -- the camera only able to capture
overly dark images. It was clear that we would have to recover and
adjust the aperature.
Rather than recover
immediately, Justin took the opportunity to do some survey missions
to test the vehicle's "survey behavior" functionality.
The first survey (done
on the surface) was a poor performer. The vehicle didn't really
stay on each of its tracklines before reaching the next of its
waypoints.
Making the tracklines
longer (again on the surface) produced a much cleaner lawnmower
survey pattern.
Running the survey at
depth showed us that we still have a few control bugs to work out.
With that, it was time to recover the vehicle and adjust the
camera.
Instead of taking the
entire vehicle apart, we were able to simply remove the bottom
fairing and open up the bottom end of the camera bottle with a
strap wrench that they had on the boat. We were able to re-adjust
the camera in record time!
Not shown: the recovery process. I got to try out my new recovery pole, and it worked
like a charm! I snagged the vehicle on the first try.
With the camera
adjustment done, it was time to re-deploy. We were much more
confident the second time around.
If you look closely, you can see the horizon tilt as the boat heels
over due to the weight of the AUV. This helped keep spacing between
the AUV and the gunwale.
Our quick-release hook
makes life very easy.
The next camera test
was also disappointing.
"I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark
blur, I see a big light blur."
These pictures were taken at a 2-meter altitude, and you can see
hints of the sea floor if you squint.
We decided to go even
lower -- to 1 meter -- which puts us at the limit of what our DVL
is able to sense for altitude.
But we finally captured some good images of the sea floor with our
new camera system! This is excellent!
The only problem is that the best image in this set (frame 236) was
taken without a DVL lock, so we have no idea what altitude produced
it. The images before and after it are no help either.
Since we had to get
back to the harbor before low tide, it was time for the second
recovery of the day.
If you look closely at the top row, you'll see the new recovery
pole in action. The boat captain was an excellent crane operator
and the vehicle was back in its cradle in just a few moments.
We steamed back to
Scituate.
This was our one good
result of the day. It's not much, but it proves that the camera's
physical settings don't need to be changed; all we need to do is
tweak parameters tomorrow to get more images like this one.
We set up the charger
before dinner, but after eating we checked on it and noticed that
the power supply had tripped. This was probably when the boat's
power was switched over to the auxiliary generator.
Back to the hotel! One
day of testing down, 4 to go!
New Recovery Pole
October 2, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
I put together a
recovery pole for Odyssey IV out of some spare steel tubing, some
hose clamps, a carabiner, and a length of 3/4" EMT conduit.
The carabiner will be
attached to the ship's crane, and will slip out of the pole once it
has been clipped to the vehicle's lifting bail. We will find out
how well it works next week!
Battery Scare in the 11th Hour!
October 2, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
While we were
re-installing the battery
into its glass sphere (after replacing
the under-performing cell #10), there was a soft pop, a
crackle, and then a hiss as clouds of tan smoke filling the
air.
Some part of the battery had short circuited; something was
seriously wrong!
We had to take the battery apart again to see what happened and to
try and fix it. We are especially under the gun to fix this,
because we are supposed to deploy on Monday to look for didemnum!
Yikes!
The source of the
crackle became apparent; it was the sound of a wire sparking and
melting itself out of its jacket. You can see the bits of melted
black jacket on the red wire.
There were some burn
marks on the outside of the battery too.
But, the real damage
was on the corner of the cell where the smoke forced its way
out.
We count ourselves very lucky that only one supercell was damaged
and that nothing caught on fire. In the end, we had to use the
supercell that had been removed as the replacement for the one that
was damaged (although we recharged it). A net gain in the end, but
only a small gain.
State of Maine's Environment Report
October 1, 2009 — via The Life Autonomous: An Intern's Story
As a part of my Environmental Policy major, I am taking part in
a senior capstone research project. We will be investigating the
state of Maine's environment through four focused assessments. I
will be working with John Abbett on Marine and Coastal
Policy.
Follow our progress here on our own blogspot blog!!
http://maineenvironment.blogspot.com/
The final report will be posted to our course webpage
State of Maine Report
Around the Americas
September 25, 2009 — via MIT AUV Lab
The folks on the Around the Americas cruise stopped by to build some sea perch and get a demo of our REx II vehicle.
