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Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition
krugg234 writes "Today [ed. note: well, a few days ago] marks the start of the Fifth Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. This year's competition involves completely autonomous robots locating and reading bar codes at various depths underwater at a naval base in San Diego. There are some good links on the site to individual competitors' websites to see how different schools tackled the same problem."
The Navy must be planning on setting up underwater grocery stores for dolphins. Well, they'll have the market cornered...
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
I wonder if Jonah would be barred from entering.
The US Naval Academy is participating in this contest. Their vehicle is powered by ... a pc104 running Windows 98...
Some people might say that the navy hasn't learned anything from the past...
/Styx
Some of you less vocabulary-savvy geeks are still wondering what "autonomous" means.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Can i PLEASE be first post? I just came home, and saw no posts, so let me be it! Thanks!
Isn't that kinda lame for a First Post?? I've never tried for first post myself, but after reading quite a few of them, it appears that a good First Post involves being very confident, arrogant, and degrading to those other contenders who failed to achieve the desired spot. You don't go telling everyone about how you stumbled into first postness, and you certainly don't go around asking "PLEASE"! You have to spout an (occasionally) clever insult (use of bad puns heavily encouraged) to all the bitches who didn't get first post, and then another little statement pimpin your own skills.
Ladies like confidence, and so do first posters. Another couple weak shows like that is liable to get you an ass kickin in the middle school locker room... (and yes, they DO know who you are...). Please keep this in mind when attempting future First Posts, for your own safety. Thank you and good day.
Now I can have a fly ride to pick up some fish-tail mermaid honeys, we can cruise on over to my fish crib and just bounce.
Scan the bar code, launch the torpedo: the message comes back over the VLF "You have destroyed a Russian cruiser. That is a total of 550 points on your reward card. Do you want to choose a gift now?"
Extreme cynicism aside, however, this kind of competition is surely a Good Thing, and I wiash it had been around when I was a student.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
To spice things up, why not allow the teams to equip their subs with short-range torpedoes? This would be fun to bet on. Also, it would serve as a more practical simulation of where modern warfare is headed. This would be even more badass if they used instead.
"Microsoft Visual Studio.net Try it now. Get your trial DVD."
Wonder if it'll let me catch div by zero or if it'll just crash my battleship.
most of the teams that are actually recording bar codes are just using a simple webcam in waterproof enclosure. the on-board computer then performs some processor intenstive code to recognize bar codes in all sorts of conditions (orientation, etc).
what i'm curious about is why no-one went with a bar code reading system similar to that in use in a grocery store? certainly the hardware modifications are possible to make a cheapo and less processor intensive solution like that work underwater.
thoughts??
Finally, something to use those old school NASA programs on!
forget it.
if these things have cameras transmitting underwater pictures, the windows teams might run into problems: windows team captain: okay, guys. let's submerge it operator: sir, i got a bluescreen. captain: ok. bring it up, recompile, reboot and try it again. goto 1;
Fleur de Sel
Anonymous underwear?!
Oh... uh...
The US Naval Academy is participating in this contest. Their vehicle is powered by a pc104 running Windows 98
Somebody must have told them that Windows 98 goes down faster than anything else on the market.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
fine next time we are involved in a military conflict we jsut wont protect Concious Objectors either...
face it you hve to spend SOME money on defense and if you dot like the exact amount you have a representative democracy at your hands...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Discussion of this article is swimming about as well as a retarded dolphin..
Don't we HAVE technology like this? what about that gizmo that took picturs of the Titanic wreck?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I doubt there are any real military applications, if you read the rules of the competition. Our school's group is using money raised entirely from donors outside of the school.
First off, having worked on a few engineering projects at school, I can tell you that it's very unlikely that any tuition is going to pay for projects like this...aside from instructor salaries and the facilities to make the projects. Most of these projects are paid for by the students, clubs, friends, families, and instructors. They will use materials from old projects (cannibalize) and beg/borrow to get the projects going. They will also usually work with companies in the area to either donate money or supplies (in this case, a dive shop would be a great sponsor).
Second, why is it "obvious military technology?" The PC you have is a descendant of machines that were used to calculate artillery tables and break codes during WWII. The Internet is a descendant of ARPAnet/Milnet. You are also overlooking any positive aspects that might come from this technology. In the future, these robots could be used to clean our harbors of toxic waste (i.e. oil drums and such tossed off of ships). They could be used for SAR missions in the cases of shipwrecks or natural disasters. Or, in light of recent events, they could be used to hunt down and kill Chinese walking fish (LOL, sorry it had to be said).
On the other side of the coin, tuition is used to fund a great many extracurricular activities (at least partially), such as marching bands, sports teams, theater, art exhibits, and much more. At the school I went to, I probably didn't realize all of the activities and such my school had to offer, but I'm sure they must have been worthwhile for someone. I certainly appreciated it when they had a Clerks/Mallrats double feature, and when they showed Cannibal: The Musical, but that's just me.
Why dont they just hook up a moded cue-cat to a remote controled toy submarine?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
While this is definitely an interesting competetion (autonomous anything is very cool - especially when they have to go against both nature and a task), I wonder how this will work with respect to practical application. I can see having to autonavigate to a destination, but why scan a barcode. Why not just have it retreive a spoon or something?
Now about the light issues. This doesn't seem right at all. Light doesn't bend more underwater than in air -- it bends at the transition between different optical densities. Since there would be no transitions underwater, the light wouldn't bend.
Isn't the whole point of using a laser, to eliminate the need for (or interference from) other sources of light? It is very easy to detect a specific frequency of light as it contrasts to black, so I highly doubt barcode scanners care at all about ambient light. I haven't tried it, but it would surprise me a lot to find that barcode scanners don't work in the dark, for instance. Again... the light coming from the sky fades at that depth, but I submit that such light would make no difference.For all I know you invented the bloody barcode scanner, so maybe I'm talking out of my butt. But then, maybe you are. ;) These are my reasoned opinions, and if you have more details to back yourself up I'm very interested in hearing them. :)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
I assume Ted Kennedy will be in the race.
Table-ized A.I.
Well, I may be a little rusty, I'm relying on some things I read about years ago.
I think the issues I read about related to why the Navy didn't use lasers/light for some things (I forget what they were...mapping terrain, communications, etc), rather than acoustics/sonar. Apparently sounds work better than light underwater for those types of things. Anyway...
While light will bend at the difference in optical densities (like a prism), the problem with using a laser underwater is dispersion (signal:noise). Water holds a lot of particulate matter. This is supposed to take place in a large outdoor tank, so it probably has a lot of stuff suspended in the water. It's may be too small to see, but it would probably make using lasers difficult. The closer they got to the barcode, the easier it would be to use a laser, since the distance would be shorter (more signal, less noise). They could probably play with the software to account for some variability.
Also, since water pressure increases as you go deeper, it may affect the density (it's Saturday, I don't want to think too hard). In a lab, "pure" water is supposed to have a specific gravity of 1 (weight/volume). Again, we are not talking about "pure" water, because it's a large tank outside. Water temperature will affect the density, as well as the content (particulate matter, etc). If you read enough Tom Clancy books, you know that the thermocline layer can affect acoustics/sonar, but that probably wouldn't affect this, since it's in a tank, not the ocean.
Another engineering point would be inertia. These robots aren't going to stop on a dime. They can stop the props, but they will keep moving, so they would probably have to read a moving target. And even though it is a pool, there may be some currents from divers, pumps, etc.
I thought they would use some sort of acoustics to find the objects, and then use the webcam/whatever to read the code. I read the rules, and the object in the center will have an acoustic pinger (probably to orient the robot to the tank). From this, the robot could (theoretically) calculate where the other objects are in the tank and go to each one and take a picture (so to speak).
Anyway, I'm not saying these things can't be done. Each team looked at the challenges and decided how they would go about solving them. They are all engineering issues, which is what competitions like these are all about. I look forward to reading some of the journal articles afterwards to see what the teams learned from the experience. I imagine that will answer these questions better (i.e. experience)
My friend is a coder for the avbotz.com team. While sitting here screwing around doing nothing worthy, he would be IM'ing me constantly about his B-tree optical algorithm.
First of all, the supermarket scanners were mentioned before, and I think that might actually be a better design than the library's scanners for this sort of thing. If you ever watch these things in action, the person practically throws them over a glass square about 8x6in or so. It's hardly precision scanning.
At the library, we have standing scanners on arms that direct the red line down onto a book's barcode. If you get a barcode anywhere beneath it, it will read it. I've scanned things in motion, at an angle, etc. I haven't tried in the dark, but I'm pretty sure it would work.
Lastly, and this is purely hypothetical, if a laser scanner worked well enough, a brute force attack would be possible--get a couple scanners on all sides, and just zoom around the tank and record what scans!
Mod this post up.
-=Lothsahn=-
I'm entering my Sharks with frickin' laser beams!
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
You have absolutely no clue at all....
um, well the sponsors are like the army, so clearly this is just to like warming geeks up to make the idea of building weapons for a living. Thin edge of the wedge dudez. In God We Trust (and the ability to kick any one in the ass)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
From the Gulf of Maine Aquarium website:
"Jason Jr. is a remote-controlled underwater robot that explored the interior of the sunken Titanic on Ballard's second expedition. It was operated by a remote control "joy stick" to probe inside the Titanic to take still and video images. It went into the grand ballroom, captain's stateroom, and down several flights of stairs. It was tethered to Alvin via a long cable."
Therefore, it was not autonomous.
The five teams going into the finals are (ranked by current point total):
1. U of Florida
2. Cornell
3. Amador Valley High School
4. MIT
5. Duke
Nah, the barcode scanner was invented by an engineer turned business owner from California. I can't recall his first name, but the last is Baglio.
He doesn't read slashdot, at least as far as his son Vic has told me.
There's no reason for the scanner to stop working without any light. A lot of red ambient lighting might interfere, though... But all the same, I would expect it to be less effective underwater. You don't get refraction since there are no transitions but you do get more scatter of the beam from the density of the water as opposed to air. Well, that's not entirely true... You'll have refractions anyway since the beam has to pass from a sealed emitter, through glass/plastic and finally into water, but these should be predictable and compensated for.
An underwater scanner would need to be much more sensitive and have a far more refined laser. This is prohibitively expensive as compared to a cheap webcam with some software.
And then there's the matter of getting close enough to scan properly...
Does anyone know the final standings of the competition?
1998 - 2nd
1999 - Honorable Mention
2000 - 8th
2001 - They sent a fucking CS student to do what an EE and an ME student were supposed to do, the dumb fuck didn't even pressurize the fucking sub, so when he put it in the water it went *blubblubblub* to the bottom of water.
2002 - We're not even listed.
I'm glad that the navy is using Win98 so that we can make fun of them, but goddammit, I'm still crying at our school's inability to comprehend that the students might honestly be more interested in working on something cool than something profitable.
[o]_O
The article you cite was, according to it's own publisher who later backed away from it, early speculation. Reality did not match the speculation. According to people actually on the ship and who actually worked on the software:
h tml
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.
Others insist that NT was not the culprit. According to Lieutenant
Commander Roderick Fraser, who was the chief engineer on board the
ship at the time of the incident, the fault was with certain
applications that were developed by CAE Electronics in Leesburg, Va.
As Harvey McKelvey, former director of navy programs for CAE, admits,
"If you want to put a stick in anybody's eye, it should be in ours."
But McKelvey adds that the crash would not have happened if the navy
had been using a production version of the CAE software, which he
asserts has safeguards to prevent the type of failure that occurred.
The programs that crashed were LAN terminals, not the LAN itself. A server app corrupted it's own database and client apps naively tried to use the bad data. At least in the debug version of the apps. These app controlled this ships equipment. The OS wasn't involved and it would have mattered what OS was being used.
What, a convenient delivery vehicle to haul a few kilos or a few tons of material somewhere without needing a driver? Who'd want that?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey, I'm Dan Weaver, one of the members of the Cornell team. (I also occasionally write H4x0r Economist.) It's great to get all this attention!
The final standings were:
1. MIT
2. Cornell
3. Florida
4. Duke
5. Amador Valley High School (really sharp kids)
We worked on our submersible over the course of seven months, from the beginning of January to the very last minute before it entered the water for its final run on Sunday. Here's a link to a very nice picture of the sub, which we nicknamed Panther:
Our submarine
Briefly, the longer top hull houses electronics and the submersible's onboard computer; the two smaller bottom hulls house batteries and motor control equipment; the black canister in the center is a Doppler velocity log (DVL) sonar that measures velocity and altitude information; the glass-domed apparatus is a headlight; on the other side of Panther, not visible in this photograph, mounted in the same orientation as the lamp, is a CCD video camera. My personal responsibility was the DVL, but I'll be happy to answer specific inquiries about the submersible's components in greater detail.
We finished in a close second to MIT, who has won the competition four of the five years that it's been held. Although we detected more targets than MIT and detected them more accurately, we took a longer time to process our data and ended up losing out because of the time penalty. We also found some additional targets whose attributes we weren't entirely sure of, and submitted them a few minutes after we submitted our first list of targets. We turned out to be right on the money with the additional targets. Had we turned in the additional targets with our original data, or had we finished processing data three minutes earlier, we would have won the competition. That would have been nice, but as it stands, I'm more than happy with our performance. We did a superlative job of completing the mission, we did everything we went to San Diego to do, and I firmly believe that we were far and away the best in the areas of hull design, sensor layout, and AI. We'll get MIT next year.
I have to put in a good word for the Navy enlisted divers who supported us while we were running the competition at the TRANSDEC sonar test facility out on Point Loma. They all had great senses of humor, an untiring dedication to their art and their duty, and a really amazing air of competence and skill. Great guys, all of them.
Jon here from the MIT team.
:)
I want to second Dan from Cornell's report: the competition was _close_, and any number or random events or slight changes in rule interpretation could have tossed the win to any of the top three.
Had our sub been tuned slightly differently, we would have completed the entire course, and would have probably reported all of the bar codes, and gotten a good half of the depths. Cornell was using much more accurate depth reporting, but their process took more time in post processing, and had they done slightly different post processing, then they would likely have won. Hell, if the rules had been slightly different, and the time penalty assessed per datapoint rather than for the entire dataset, they would probably have won. Or if Amador Valley hadn't lost their speed controller, then they would have had a very good chance at first place.
My responsibility on the MIT sub was the battery system (we went to NiMH from lead acid), which included building the battery chargers. I also designed the 'disco' lights, an array of blue LED chaser lights which were there mostly for fun, but were also supposed to have debugging utility. Sorry, no cool pictures yet.
Much of this year's development effort went into making systems more robust, rather than building new systems. Point to point wiring replaced with PCBs, hand matched dimensions replaced with CNC parts, more careful underwater splices, etc. Cornell lost their sub last year, and had a chance to do substantial rebuilding, and it shows: a beautiful machine with very clean wire dress, frame, etc. Our main support frame is showing its age.
The MIT team is looking forward to a near complete rebuild, to enhance the robustness of the hull and frame. We also want to go smaller and lighter; if only to make getting the damn thing into the water easier. I'd also like to get our sub into some real water some where...take pictures of the bottom of a lake or some such. Not sure how practical such would be, but who knows
Anyhow, I'm going to remain an Anonymous Coward, but I'll keep looking at this page for a time.
-Jon
Final Standings
1st Place: MIT
2nd Place: Cornell
3rd Place: University of Florida
4th Place: Duke
5th Place: Amador Valley High School
6th Place: University of Rhode Island
7th Place: Ecole de technologie superieure
8th Place: Florida Atlantic University
9th Place: Team Tortuga
10th Place: U.S. Naval Academy
11th Place: Saratoga and Monta Vista High Schools
12th Place: University of Victoria
13th Place: University of West Florida
14th Place: University of Colorado - Denver
15th Place: DeVry -- Calgary
http://www.auvsi.org/competitions/water.cfm