On Friday, October 19, CUAUV, alongside other engineering project teams set up a table to showcase our vehicle to the public. Members were present to answer questions and talk about the team and vehicle. We talked to many alumni of the Engineering School, interested students and professors, and certainly impressed many people. Keep up the good work!

The 2012-13 CUAUV New Members.

We are very excited to have these new members on the team for the Fall semester. We look forward to working with you all! Please look out for our team social event. It will be a great way for new members to get to know each other and returning members.

Join CUAUV! Become a part of the team that builds a robotic submarine, participates in an internationally-recognized competition and research.

ALL majors are welcome to apply! Freshmen are highly encouraged to apply!

Info Sessions:

Wednesday Aug 29, 5:00-7:00 pm, Philips 219
Thursday Aug 30, 5:00-7:00 pm, Philips 219
Saturday Sept 1, 3;00-5:00 pm, RPC 205

Recruitment Schedule:

Friday, Sept 7: Applications due by 6:00pm to Upson 108
Friday-Saturday, Sept 7-8: You'll hear back from the team
Saturday-Tuesday, Sept 9-11: Interviews (In the ELL, basement of Upson)
Saturday-Sunday, Sept 15-16: Training

Looking forward to meeting you.

CUAUV would like to welcome everyone back for fall 2012! We are looking forward to another great semester.

CUAUV was lucky enough to be part of a San Diego local news segment featuring the RoboSub competition! Come check out the footage and see team member Mike Mahoney and team leader Tom Jackson represent the team!

http://landing.newsinc.com/shared/video.html?freewheel=91059&sitesection=kswb_loc_top_fro&VID=23749510

As you have probably already read from the post below, CUAUV won first place at the AUVSI/ONR RoboSub competition! Congratulations to everyone involved and everyone who helped this become a reality!

The day began by "sleeping in" for the first time in a while and arriving at TRANSDEC at 8am to prepare for our 10:20am practice run. The first 19 minutes of our 40 minute practice run were spent doing a full mission run. Were were successfully able to complete all elements of the course, including the transport hydrophone task. The only things that stopped it from being a 100% completetion of the course were that we skipped the second wire to save time and dropped the recover object to the right of the stand rather than directly on top of it. We were extremely happy with this run! The last 21 minutes were spent doing tuning on several mission elements, mainly on the emperor task, because even though we got both of them it took a rather long amount of time.

At 4:00pm, our final run started. In between the two runs, we spent time just relaxing and doing whatever minor work needed to be done on the sub. The run began by successfully completing the validation gate, buoys, and wire. During the bins, we only dropped on one bin, although it appeared that we had lined up and were ready to drop on the second. We then moved on to the torpedo target where we were successfully shot two torpedoes through the small holes. The emperor was next, where we successfully knocked off one grape before moving to the hydrophone task. We completed all parts of the hydrophone task, including identifying the correct pinger, picking up the recovery object, moving to the other pinger, surfacing in the correct octagon, and dropping the recovery object. At that point, the run ended at slightly after 14 minutes. We couldn't have been happier to have this run for our final run!

If you would like to see a replay of this run from the sub's perspective, check out the video below.

Later that night at the awards ceremony, we were presented with first place and a check for $8000, an 3rd generation Intel processor and motherboard, a nail (for Cor-nailed-it, one of Dave's jokes), and a set of mini lego men. On top of that, we also won an award for first place in static judging that came with another check for $500. Again, congratulations to everyone on CUAUV and everyone who helped make this a reality!

Congratulations CUAUV on winning the 15th International RoboSub Competition!

Congratulations also to the other teams that made it to the finals and won special awards:

1st Place – Cornell University $8,000
2nd Place – University of Florida $4,000
3rd Place - Team SONIA - École de Technologie Supérieure (Canada) $3,000
4th Place - Harbin Engineering University (China) $1,000
5th Place - Far Eastern Federal University (Russian Federation) $1,000
6th Place – University of Maryland $1,000

Judges Awards
Gladiator Challenge: University of Central Florida $500
Best New Entry: Far Eastern Federal University $500
Craftsmanship: Mälardalen University (Sweden) $500
Static Judging: Cornell $500

Keep checking as more details and pictures will follow in coming days.

Tune into the live webcast of the RoboSub 2012 competition now! To see the webcast, visit http://www.todocast.tv/500films/robosub2012/! Our final run will be at 4:00pm PST!

We were able to get first place in the qualifiers on top of yesterday's first place in static judging!

The morning started with a practice run at 7:20am. Its goal, like most of our recent practice runs, was to test the full mission. The mission began on a 12 minute timer due to constraints on the run. We began by successfully completed all tasks up until the bins, at which point we timed out (due to the shorter run as well as getting the tether stuck on several elements) and went directly to the hydrophone task. Again, we encountered problems differentiating the practice side pinger from the competition side pinger which led to us surfacing without grabbing the recovery object due to time.

Our second run was very much so similar to the first. Again, we timed out at the bins and went to the hydrophones and then had problems differentiating the pingers. This time, the timeout was caused by the shorter run as well as mistaking a buoy for a wire as we traveled over it, which we were able to recover from. Between this run and the qualifier, time was spent on localization code which might help in differentiating the pingers in the future.

At 4:30pm, we began our qualifier. During the run, we were successfully able to complete the validation gate, the buoys, and the first wire, shoot two torpedoes through the small hole in the target, knock off one grape, find the correct pinger, and surface in the correct octagon. We were unable to knock off the second grape due to driving too far into the element in our attempt to swipe at it. During the hydrophone task, we attempted to grab the recovery object but there was not enough time left in the run which was made worse by confusion again between the competition side and the practice side pingers. We were extremely happy with this run, and it proved enough to score us first place in the qualifiers!

During our final practice run, we went straight past the first wire and began the mission there due to time constraints. We completed the bins, but skipped the targets due to human error in identifying which side faced where. We were successfully able to knock both grapes off of the emperor task and successfully completed the hydrophone task. We lowered down onto the recovery object as well, but due to a loose air connector we were unable to grab the object.

We are extremely happy with how the day turned out, and look forward to see our the other finalists tomorrow in TRANSDEC! Come see our run at 4:00pm tomorrow!

"Home away from home!" - Killick



Team members Jeff and Mike downloading data from the sub after our qualifying run.



Killick attempting the torpedo target task during our qualifying run.



Killick attempting the emperor task during out qualifying run.



Team members Alvin, Melissa, and David carrying the vehicle to a practice run.

As the title says, today was the first day of qualifier runs!

The day began at 7:20 with our first practice run. Due to the qualifiers, all practice runs during qualifier days will be done on the practice side of TRANSDEC. We attempted another full mission run this morning. We successfully completed the validation gate, buoys, and first wire. At the bins task, we dropped two markers in the same bin, quickly followed by shooting two torpedoes through the target. During the emperor, we were able to knock off one of the grapes. Finally, we attempted the hydrophones task but unfortunately ran into problems with confusing the practice side and competition side pinger. Even with the problems, it was a very high scoring run.

Around 12:30 we had our second practice run. Unfortunately, due to the lighting conditions at that time (solar noon) we had a lot of trouble identifying pipes which slowed down our run. Most of the time was spent trying to tune vision on the fly to handle the conditions. Again, we also confused competition side and practice side pingers because they were both on simultaneously. Although not a lot of tasks were accomplished during the run, we were further able to tune mission to handle all lighting conditions.

Finally, the time came for our first qualifier at 4:00pm! We began with the run by successfully completing the validation gate, buoys, and wire. After the wire while getting a heading from one of the pipes to the bins, an error in the code occurred that caused the vehicle to think that the heading to the bins was 180 degrees inverted from the true value. This caused a significant time delay but, due to the robustness of the code, the vehicle was still able to find the bins and drop one marker before timing out. Thankfully, this error turned out to be a trivial fix after analyzing the run after the fact. After the bins, we successfully shot two torpedoes through the small holes on the target. Next, we approached the emperor. Unfortunately, due to the time delay earlier, right as we were about to knock off a grape, the emperor task timed out as well and we were not able to get either of them. As we attempted the hydrophone task, we were successfully able to enter the correct octagon, but due to the practice side pinger again the vehicle exited the octagon soon after. At this point, the mission timed out and the vehicle surfaced, unfortunately outside the octagon. Even with the problems, though, the run was very high scoring and we are extremely pleased with the run and how well the vehicle responded to problem cases such as these.

Overall, we are extremely happy with how our first day of qualifiers turned out, and we were ecstatic to hear that we had scored first in static judging this year! Getting ready for another day of qualifiers tomorrow with our second qualifier run at 4:30pm!

Team member Mike Mahoney managing the tether for our first practice run of the day.



Team members Brook, Melissa, and Jisha talking to interested passer-bys about Killick.



Killick passing through the validation gate during the second practice run.



Killick approaching buoys during the second practice run.



Killick in the octagon during the second practice run.



Killick passing through the validation gate during the first qualifier.



Killick on the Jumbo-tron dropping markers in the bins during the first qualifier.