Tech Update

It's been a busy week here. Yesterday we packed up early in the morning and took a ferry from Valletta, Malta to Pachino, Sicily. From there we hopped a few buses and took a beautiful ride through the country, passing by the world's most active volcano (Mount Etna) along the way. We reached our hotel in Carini (in the province of Palermo, Sicily) in the afternoon and got situated for deployment. Billy will talk about that, so I will cover the other things that have been going on. Despite the nagging fatigue that we are all feeling, there have been some really great project improvements. Since these will also be addressed in similar blog posts, I will give a little update on mine: the archaeologist graphical interface.

I have already put together a majority of the framework for the interface, and recently began loading in cistern meshes. Due to the fact that Billy and Jeff have their code complete (aside from per-cistern fine tuning), the three of us can pump out a cistern model and have it online in about an hour. We will be doing this for each new cistern that we deploy the robot into. My project is still running into some choppiness which will be sorted out in 2-3 days.

Here is a sample of my progress as of today.

Note: If you are running Linux, you may run into difficulty with the Unity3D plugin.

I am still working on the textures/lighting of the cistern and water, the spherical linear interpolation of the rotational trackball (should be a quick fix!), and the photo selection on the right hand side of the interface. It may not be very easy to see, but right now all that the photo selection does is highlight a region on the wall that the selected picture shows. Once the photo selection is complete the model will rotate so that the highlighted area that the picture displays will be more visible and a frustrum with the robot's position and angle of view will be shown. I also intend to use Tim's higher quality go-pro pictures, rather than these stills from the video stream from last year. I might end up adding a big pop-up version of the photo as well. We'll see what happens. Aside from that, it's time to start rapidly uploading and spitting out cisterns as we deploy into them!

Greetings from Malta!

Hi readers,
Yesterday we touched down in Malta! The days blurred together during the flights, but passing over the Swiss alps at 10,000m made up for the rest of the mind numbing travel. Once we arrived, we took a precarious bus ride to our apartments to get situated. All of us promptly passed out and woke up some inordinate amount of time later to a fresh morning in Malta! Upon waking, Jeff, Sara and I took a ~2 hour long walk down the coast of Sliema. Here's what that looked like:




After we got back everybody else was up so we unpacked the gear to check the condition of the robots. We all got a little bit of work done with our projects, and shortly after Tim and I went to the ironmonger (hardware store in Malta) to get some sandpaper/rubbing alcohol/superglue/various other odds and ends. We returned and finished some more work. At around 1:00PM (it felt more like 4:00AM...) the group went out in search of lunch. We stumbled upon a traditional Maltese restaurant and took a seat inside. Everybody in the group tried some wild orders. Billy and I were a little bit tame, and got crab and lobster ravioli. Some of the other orders were more interesting. Jeff got sea urchin pasta, and Tyler got rabbit (below)!


After lunch (which is 3 hours and 6 courses long in Malta), we headed to the grocery store and then back home. Sliema is an incredibly dense city, so navigating can be difficult. We had some trouble in this manner, but found our way back home. Back to work!

Cultural Update - Engineering Degrees in Malta

Hi everyone!

Last week in our ES410 class, we gave final presentations that detailed our ethnic studies research papers and how we would be collecting data. Seeing as our ICEX team is splitting off from the rest of the class in one week, we will be completing our projects while in Malta! This gives our team some exciting benefits such as the ability to conduct on-site interviews and publish a primary source document.

My research project is on the difference between the engineering educations offered at Malta's two main tertiary educational facilities: University of Malta and Malta College of Art, Science and Technology (MCAST). The final product of my research will be in two segments. I will have a formal document, and online information that will go up on our website that will discuss the similarities and differences between the two schools. I intend to include information from interviews (WHEW! what an alliteration!) with professors from both universities discussing the degree to which the engineering work at each school could be considered "hands on" or "strictly theoretical". I would also like to include information about the reason for the formation of MCAST back in the 1970s. Both parts of my research project will come into a more clear context once we take off for Malta, so for right now I will wrap this up by saying that I am very excited to have this opportunity!

Pool mapping test run

In the past week Tyler and I mapped the pool as a test run before we take off for Malta (12 days to go!!). We drove the ROV around and took SONAR data at 5 or 6 spots along the bottom of the pool, and another 5 readings 1 meter from the bottom. We grabbed Billy's software and put the scans together to make a mosaic and a map of the pool.

The image to the left is the SONAR mosaic. This is a dry copy/paste of all of the SONAR scans after being cropped and rotated in an image processor. The 6 spots in the middle of the image are noise around the location that the scan was taken from. When the SONAR map is made all of this noise gets cut out.

The next image is the SONAR map that was generated using Billy's software. After creating special files that contain information on the bearing, depth, and time that a SONAR reading was taken, a scan can be loaded in. Then we load in a second scan, and a particle filter is used to converge the two scans. This can be done with different SONAR scans until a complete map is generated. Since this was the first set of SONAR data that Tyler and I took, we did not have the gain up high enough to fill in all of the holes around the pool. This makes Jeff's hole filling algorithm work a bit harder to produce a final map a little further down the line.

This is the method that we will use in Malta to produce our cistern maps. After the map gets generated, Jeff runs his hole filling algorithm and the map file will get passed to Tim and Tyler. They will add textures taken from the GoPro cameras strapped to the ROV. After that, the file gets passed to Brent who will be modifying it to include salinity and temperature visualizations. The map will finally get passed to me, and I will upload the mesh into Unity3D to create a 3D version that can be rotated, translated, and scaled by the viewer. This file will be embedded into an online frame, and anybody that wants to will be able to view our data!

More to come soon!

Archaeologist Graphic Interface Update

After a meeting this week, we've decided on the applications that will be used for the 3D graphic interface project. Because Google Earth already has a geo-spacially oriented, properly scaled, navigable world built out of satellite images, we decided that it would be best to create a Google Earth layer with links to SONAR mosaics and 3D meshes for each site. This allows us to build the framework for our interface before the trip, and then fill the information from each site right after it is visited.

We plan to embed our Google Earth layer right into Sara's water and society website, and host all of our other files (3D cistern meshes, SONAR overlays, etc.) there as well. The embedded Google Earth layer will have pop up descriptions, pictures, and links to other information collected from each cistern. I will still be using an embedded Unity3D frame to display the 3D cistern meshes (slightly simpler than writing code in WebGL that would allow the 3D mesh file to be navigable by a camera, although it does require a browser plug-in unlike WebGL). This frame will also be hosted on the Omeka water and society website. I should have a samples up shortly! Stay tuned!

Winter Break Progress

Over winter break I had two tasks. The first task was to do some investigation into Google Earth's ability to display our findings. The second was to get everything prepared for our labs at Pacheco. The progress I made towards these two projects is summarized below:

Google Earth

I'm convinced that Google Earth will be a sufficient tool for sharing our results. It has every feature that we need: html formatting, easy to link to files from databases, image/video embedding, descriptions of each site, underground depth/maps. Additionally, it is commonly used software, making it easier to spread our findings.

That said, there are a few things that I haven't figured out yet. I don't know how to share a google earth file so that multiple people can edit it at once (aside from e-mailing the other person the file). I think the program has this capability, but I haven't figured out how it works yet. Another problem is that when you create a map of a place below ground (cisterns are below ground) the polygon won't show up on a map embedded into a website. The last problem is that I can get an embedded video to work on MY copy of google earth, but can't get an embedded video working in an embedded blog post like this one. Anyways, problems aside, here is a little sample that I made up.

If you have the Google Earth plugin installed, you should be able to view this. The camera should pan to my house and you will see some information about it when you click it. If you double click "Erik's house", it will zoom in to street view. Additionally, you may click the green polygon on the ground to see an outline of my underground lab, and again, some information on that. As far as I can tell, this is what we need for the project.

Pacheco Labs

I received a copy of the powerpoints and lecture notes from last year, and have been discussing everything with Chris, Jane, and the teacher from Pacheco (Jill). Looks like we're all going to meet up as a group on Wednesday at 12:10 to talk about the curriculum and maybe do a run through of the first demo that we will do for Jill's class on week 2. The first demo is a discussion of robotics, engineering, and then a demo of a line follower robot.

Over break I borrowed a Lego Minstorms kit from professor John Chen to make a line following robot. I got him working, but just barely. I was testing him out on brown cardboard with black electrical tape and poor lighting, and Jill's classroom is black/grey carpet so we will need to use masking tape. I will be going to her classroom on Wednesday afternoon to test out this one. The bots that we will be using for the week 4 & 5 demos will be borrowed from Jill, and the bots for the week 6 & 7 demos are in the LAIR, but need some repairing. I'll get to that in a week or two. That just about wraps everything up for now. More from me later!

Oh, and here are a few bad photos of the bot that I made for the first lab.

Erik's Pre-Trip Learning Goals

Using what I know so far about ICEX, I have developed a few goals that I would like to have accomplished by the project's end. I'm sure that these learning goals will be revised as the quarter progresses, and I accept that there will be events that change my aim along the way that I have not yet considered. With that said, my pre-trip goals are the following:

I would like to gain enough knowledge of robotics and computer science principles to become a more well rounded systems engineer. In other words, I would like to be able to understand complex processes and systems that involve a variety of engineering disciplines. This is not a goal that can be perfected, but rather one that must be continuously worked towards. It will be difficult, and it does not end once ICEX is over (in fact, it never does)! I think it's safe to say that by partaking in the ICEX project, this is a goal that everyone on the team is working towards. I guess I'm in good company!

I was assigned two sub-projects to complete along the way. These projects are developing an interactive Google Earth (or other) copy of our findings for documentation and educational purposes, and keeping track of the curriculum that we will share with the kids at Pacheco Elementary and any other schools that we may be working with. My goal is to educate as many people as possible such that they will be interested in what robotics has to offer. Hopefully, if we do our job at Pacheco, a handful of the kids will use our labs as an incentive to work harder in school so that they can do the same things in their future. While the details of the Google Earth database are not as clear as of yet, I hope that the outcome of this sub-project will be just as beneficial.

Just like every other human, I have a knack for adventure. Malta will feed that knack! I'm ecstatic to be on another side of the planet learning about things that I have never encountered! When I'm on my deathbed and I ask myself if I lived a complete life, this is one of the things that I will use to convince myself that I did. Happiness is something that everybody strives for, and this is the best way that I can think of to be happy. My goal is to make the trip as fulfilling as it can possibly be; to jam it with adventure, to have a mind opening experience, and to bring back as many stories as I can cram into my brain.

Hello World!

Hi everyone,

I'm Erik, and it looks like I'll get to know all of you pretty well in the next half a year. The fact that I'll be tagging along this March makes me feel like a five year old on Christmas Eve. I'm a Junior Materials Engineering student at Cal Poly, and spend my time (or whatever's left of it after the heaping pile of schoolwork has been subdued) rock climbing, distance running, and playing the guitar. I do a little bit of coding on the side, and I'm interested in pursuing some sort of graduate degree in computer science a little further down the line.

Anyways, I can't wait to meet everyone. This is going to be a fun quarter! See you all soon!

Here's a picture in case you see me around:

(P.S. sorry about the post title. Someone had to do it.)