New Toys!

After experiencing so many technical difficulties with our ROV, we got a new toy on Monday! We're not quite sure how he did it (most of us are speculating on superpowers), but Dr. Clark was able to get together enough money to buy a new ROV and ship it to Malta. The new ROV is looking slick, but more importantly it came with a working cable (although it's not as long as our previous cable, it is long enough for most sites, is not attached to the carrying case, and can be attached to an older cable to add length), a much larger monitor (the older ones are about 6in while the new one is about 15in), and a new working depth sensor. What does that mean!? Depth measurements and 3D data! YAY! After tearing through the packaging like a kid on Christmas, we decided to test out the new ROV on the cave near St. George's Bay since our previous readings could be improved upon (and because the cave is just that cool).



Tuesday was fun, too! In groups we all climbed aboard the Isis II (a boat) to check out a WWII shipwreck in the bay. The team took turns visiting the site in groups of 2 or 3 and each member took a turn driving a much larger ROV around the shipwreck. It handled differently from our VideoRay and had a longer response time, but a few quick minutes of practice proved to be enough (at least, for our purposes). There were also some divers who happened to be in the area. They were supposed to be on one side of the wreck while we would stay on the other, but slowly during my turn they crept over to our side. This was a little thrilling as I didn't want to slam the very expensive equipment I was controlling into anyone and they came in rather quickly. Fortunately, I was able to keep my distance while not losing sight of the wreck until I was done. We then surfaced the robot and reeled it in with a crane (much easier than pulling it out by hand) and headed back to the dock. And while I am excited for the new VideoRay, it was a great treat to be able to use this other ROV.

In Japan, Rescue Robots Are Poised to Go From Lab to Quake Scene

Professors in Japan and the United States hope to use rescue robots to help locate survivors and assess conditions in hard-to-reach places during the country’s recovery.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/in-japan-rescue-robots-are-poised-to-go-from-lab-to-quake-scene/

The "robots will probably not be used in the initial days, but they could be called into action soon, as teams begin to search for victims in less-accessible places and assess the damage to collapsed buildings and flooded waterways, Ms. Murphy says.

The most useful robots at the moment, she says, will be aerial drones that can provide instantaneous assessments of the damage to upper levels of buildings, and remotely operated underwater vehicles, or ROV’s, which can help locate underwater objects and determine the condition of bridges and pipelines."

(More?) Hardware Repair

So we decided to stay home on Thursday (March 10th) after running into some hardware troubles on Wednesday and ended up getting a lot of troubleshooting done. Our major goals for the day were making the partial ROV water-proof so that we could check its depth sensor in our makeshift pool (a large trashcan), checking the depth sensor of the full ROV, and doing some work on one of our tethers so that we could get full communication with the ROV (one of the problems we experienced Wednesday).

Tyler and I worked with the ROV and Brig and Jeff took on the tether job. We hoped to meet up later in the day to connect the 2 hopefully-fixed pieces of hardware. Tyler and I put the trashcan into the shower and filled it up with water.

We waterproofed the partial ROV and put it in the water for the first time since we've been here in Malta (we had been primarily using it for parts). We used both ROVs and both of our control boxes to test the depth sensors. We received inconsistent readings of depth on the control boxes, and could not communicate with the sonar unit at all. After some testing, we took a break and got some McDonald's coffee down the road. We were even graced by Timmy's presence midway through our day.

Jeff came down and finished up splicing the new piece of the tether together so that we could combine our jobs from the day.

The fixed tether solved the sonar communication problem completely! We now knew that the problem was in the other tether (the one not spliced) so we could now actually get sonar data from the cave! We also tested both cables connected in tandem so that we might be able to get some extra length in the huge cave. The cables connected and were able to control the ROV, but we still did not have sonar communication, which again assured us that the error was within the tether.

The final step was to waterproof the new connection. This required wrapping each connection in electrical tape to prevent shorts, sealing all the connections with epoxy, heat shrinking the epoxy, covering this in a sturdy hose-like wrap, and finally epoxying the ends of the cover.

By the end of the day, the ROVs were back together and waterproofed, and the tether could now communicate with the sonar. Although we lost a day at the cave, we were able to successfully remedy some major problems, and the entire team felt like it was a good choice.

Gozo

In addition to collecting information at various sites throughout Malta, we’ve been able to go to several sites on the smaller island of Gozo. Gozo is only 14km long and 7km wide and has approximately 31,000 residents. It is known as being much more green compared to Malta and the industry is more focused around agriculture. Below is a view over part of the island, as seen from the citadel in Victoria (also called Rabat) which is the capital city of Gozo.

Our sites on Gozo (on Monday) were focused on water galleries (as opposed to cisterns or wells). It was a neat change of pace to see the lay out horizontally instead of relying completely on sonar and video data from the ROV to get an idea of the layout and general structure of the cistern.

We did two sites on Monday. The first one, Ghar Ilma (Water Cave), was at a private residence and was apparently very important in supplying most of the water for the citadel back when residents of Gozo would have to sleep within the protected walls of the citadel (to stay safe from pirate attacks). I was surprised at the extent of this gallery. There were several different passageways and the main one extended for over 900 ft. We collected data for a lot of it, but were unable to map everything due to the limited length of our cable (only 250 ft) and the fact that there was a pile of debris blocking part of the main passageway.

Our second site was another private residence in someone’s garden. We set up in a small grove of tangerine/orange trees and ran the cable down to the water gallery. The depth readings on our control box were still not working properly, but we were able to get good sonar scans for the entire gallery.

After we finished collecting data, we packed up quickly and drove to the ferry in order to catch it on time (so we could meet our driver on the other side at the scheduled time). We got there in time, but almost missed the ferry anyways due to complications getting all of our equipment (a large generator, several large robot boxes, and various other bags and toolboxes) into a luggage container. We did end up making it, enjoyed the beautiful ride back to Malta and concluded another successful day of data collection.

Pressure Problems

Calibrating the ROV depth sensor has been a continuous event throughout our trip. Our excursion to the Mdina cisterns began with an investigation of the local gas station air compressors. Before getting there we were discussing all the different units of pressure that we might run into to preempt converting units if we had limited access to the air compressors. It turns out the common units were lbf/in^2 and Bar. The first gas station had a free air compressor to use but the pressure was no more than ~20 psi but there was no pressure gage to know for sure so we moved on. We found another gas station nearby with an adequate air compressor and the gas attendant was very excited to help us when he saw our robot. The pressure from the air compressor was not high enough and after briefly explaining the problem to the gas attendant he began brainstorming with us on how to solve the problem given the limited equipment we had to work with. After clarifying the problem, he left and came back shortly with a small plastic cap and he began using a knife to take out some of the plastic so it would fit better on the air compressor nozzle. Billy and I fastened the make-shift pressure adapter onto the nozzle and we were able to get the correct pressure to calibrate the ROV. We never knew how exciting it would be to calibrate the ROV (again) and gain so much knowledge about engineering and culture in Malta. Learn by doing at its best!

Chuck Norris jokes are good but Timmy jokes are better simply because Timmy is the subject.

More pool tests

A few more pictures from the recent pool test where we got to drive the ROV around with the joystick

The Pool!

Just wanted to share that we got the ROV in our pool and drove it around with the joystick and toughbook today. Yay!

And we had the IVER in and doing missions. Yay!

Pics:

Jennifer took a couple of the ROV (I think...) but I don't have those ones.

More pictures from the pool

Sorry for the delay, but here are the pictures I took from the day at the pool