Meetings and Technical Update

It truly has been a busy week. As that all us Cal Poly students leave tomorrow, much preparation was done this week. Many of us had to take one or more final exams, and finish final projects for our classes. Thursday night the team went out to dinner to take a small break from preparations and plan the packing of our technical equipment. On Friday we packed everything we needed from the Lair and confirmed some last minute details.

For a little more than the last week I have been helping Sara with the water and society part of ICEX. I worked to install the Omeka database system on the server space provided by the Cal Poly Computer Science Department. Due to my lack of experience in database installation it took longer than expected but on Friday it was successfully installed. The website for the database is not currently in a state that we would like to share with the public but I expect that it won't be very long until it is. Unfortunately, due to the time it took me to set up the database among the other work for this past week, I have not had the chance to work on the programming side of my project but Tyler and Tim have gotten some work done on the mounting of the Otter Box cases.These will house the salinity sensor, the pressure/temperature sensor and the PAM. See the post below for more details.

Goals and Progress

Over the break I've worked on integrating the data from Smart Tether into the FastSLAM algorithm for better localization of the ROV in the underwater caves of Malta. The algorithm will match up several Smart Tether measurements with the times of the sonar scans and use an average of those measurements to calculate a weight for a given particle's estimated position of the ROV. I've also started to make sample Smart Tether data based on the data we collected at the pool to use for testing.

Having worked on localization with the x80 ground robot and a known map in Prof. Clark's Autonomous Robot Navigation class, I am interested in the technical challenges presented by underwater localization and with having no map initially. I've studied Latin for four years and Italian for two, so I'm very interested in the history of Malta as it dates back to Greek and Roman times as well as the culture of Malta and the Mediterranean region.

Cultural & Technical Goals

Having been to Malta once already, my learning goals are probably slightly different than the rest of the team's. Culturally, I am aiming to get a deeper understanding of how Malta developed as a country in order to better understand the cultural background of the country. I'm hoping this will giving me a better insight on the Maltese traditions and cultural norms. Most of the research will occur before arriving in Malta which should allow for some interesting social interactions.

As for the technical goals, I am aiming to enhance our scan matching algorithm to handle 3D sonar scans. This will help us generate a more accurate representation of the cisterns as well as help the visualization team generate more realistic models.

Goals

This will be my first time going to Europe, so my cultural goal is to experience and learn about the differences in lifestyles between people in Malta and people in the United States. I think it will also be very exciting to learn about the rich histories of the places we will visit.

As for the technical side, I am interested in co-operating with everyone and seeing how all of the different projects fit together. My personal goal is to develop my skills in working with new API and learn more about the algorithms involved in autonomous vehicles. Professor Clark's class was my first experience with robots, so I would also like to see how everything is going to work in the field.

I look forward to getting to know everyone working on the project!

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.