The UTD Autonomous Underwater Vehicle team constructs vehicles to compete in the yearly AUVSI/ONR Student AUV competition. These vehicles must perform some series of tasks in an underwater environment without the aid of human intervention or external computing resources. If you are interested in participating, please feel free to join our email list or come to a meeting.

This year's competition will be held in San Diego, CA at SPAWAR's TRANSDEC facility on Point Loma from July 29-August 3. More info. Photo.

LATEST NEWS

Finally some good work is getting done again... – Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:57:00 +0000
Been a while since we have updated the news here. Rest assured, we have been diligently working to prepare for the 2007 AUVSI competition. The new boards for this years electronics suites are coming along quite nicely and should be in our hands and back from the board shop within the next few weeks.

Here are some renders of the newest additions to the AUV team arsenal. First is the FPGA board which will be utilized for sonar processing this year. It makes use of the Cyclone II FPGA for the design.
Next we have the ATMEGA2560 based micro-controller board, which will be our main controller for the AUV's other sensors, and sense-lines.



We should be getting these two designs back from the board shop soon and begin testing the designs out.
— noreply@blogger.com (Randy Rosales)

Beginagain! – Wed, 15 Nov 2006 06:46:00 +0000
With the semester coming to an end, we need to start thinking about how all of our systems are going to physically be implemented within the constraints of a water-proof submersible.

To start this process it is neccessary to understand the feedback loop that occurs when planning such a vehicles layout.

Electronics determine system size -> system size determines hull shape and size -> hull shape and size places constraints on electronic system size...you get the idea.

These mechnical constraints were only solved by the prototyping boards insomuch as we use a mechanical connector that fits them and size the hull to fit them as well.

As many of you have seen, some designs fit on the prototyping board and some don't. In either case: when it comes to integrating these designs within the hull of our AUV, custom boards will be fabricated to optimize for space within the hull and allow for the specialized connections that will have to occur when running high power (motors, active sonar...etc) , along with the communication buses.

In light of these problems we are about to face, I propose we initiate peer design reviews. Each student will be responsible for completing a fully detailed schematic of their system. These schematics must detail exact parts, signals, and proposed mechanical connections. These schematics will then be reviewed by the rest of the team for soundness of design.

This peer review process will allow us to begin analyzing the big picture of how our electronics packages will all start to fit in the AUV hull. The problems we have will also surface when the overall picture is more clearly shown.

At the moment, we have the option of using last year's hull, improving on the existing hull, or creating an entirely new one. Decisions like these cannot be made on an individual basis and require the team to make a good decision.

In the next few weeks we will need to start having leadership meetings to discuss these topics and come to concrete decisions. Everyone will be invited to attend these meetings, and we will need to start making concrete decisions on topics such as hull design and mechanical layout of the electronics packages.

We all have a lot of work ahead of us.
— noreply@blogger.com (Randy Rosales)

Camera fixed, Straight lines – Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:34:00 +0000
I haven't gotten a whole lot of vision work done in the past couple of days, mostly because the camera's been producing bad output. We finally tracked it down to a corroded cable last night, and have replaced it with a new camera, hopefully with a better connector. The compass is still not behaving, but its output is looking a lot better. We can probably fix it by recalibrating it; if not, it is usable over about 3/4 of its range. Even without the compass, we can make it through the gate on the IMU alone (and maybe hit the docking station). Time to go down to the pool and get this vision thing done.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Vision, Sonar, and Compass – Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:02:00 +0000
Sunday night, I swam laps with the sub for about an hour, and it only ever lost the line three times. Whenever it did that, though, it always picked up the adjacent one successfully. At the same time, Wes and Ian were unsuccessfully fighting with the sonar boards trying to read the time differential between two channels. Once they get that worked out, it looks like the sonar will be working properly.

The compass has also started reporting bad values, and we haven't been able to fix it yet. If the values were consistent, then we could probably use the compass, but at reduced effectiveness. The compass seems to have several different transfer functions and there is no way for us to know which one it is using this time. We also don't know if the problem is the compass reporting the value incorrectly or the AVR reading it incorrectly.

I was at the pool for about three hours yesterday, and discovered that the handheld PC that was loaned to us doesn't have a daylight-readable display, so it is mostly useless in the Texas sun. In the evenings, however, it is quite invaluable. I did some work on the compass yesterday, and it seems to be better. Unfortunately, that does not necessarily mean "useful". I also had trouble getting the vision system to recognize the test bins, but I believe that is because the pool is so shallow that it could never get the entire bin in frame at the same time.

Today's adgenda (for me) at the pool is:

1. Get the sub travelling straight by any means necessary. This probably means using the IMU's rate gyro to control our yaw speed to 0, independent of our heading.
2. Train the vision system on our test course elements in daylight. See how long it takes and how dificult it is with a washed-out screen.
3. Follow the orange pipe. This should just work, but it will be the first time the sub has followed a non-straight line.
4. Identify a bin in the camera frame. If necessary, use a surrogate bin that is a smaller target due to the shallowness of the pool.
5. Get the bin-seeking control system working.
6. Follow the orange pipe to a bin and stop at the bin instead of continuing along the line.
7. When sufficiently centered over a bin, dive to the bottom, remaining centered over the bin.
8. Drop markers on the bin.
9. Automatically abort the vision system when we have no more markers to drop.

Hectic Week – Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:36:00 +0000
I'm sorry that I haven't posted something up here for a week, but we've all been running to get problems fixed. As I was doing that, Wes was testing the new faceplace for leaks, of which it had plenty. It took us several days to find and fix all of them. At some point, the computer decided to stop working. We still have no idea why, but something failed and it doesn't power up anymore. We put our replacement board in, and everything worked great, in the lab. Once we got all of the leaks worked out, we put the electronics back in, and the computer refused to stay up for more than 10 minutes. We didn't get that figured out until Friday night, when we did a successful depth control run.

Yesterday, we didn't get into the pool, but we did get a lot of work done. We fixed the camera cable (which still needs to be tested); we installed the kill switch; we got the marker dropper working; we fried a servo; we fixed a communications problem between the sub and the buoy; we got the hydrophones mounted to the sub. Today, we need to verify all of that, and do something that looks a little like a mission run.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Computer recovery – Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:01:00 +0000
Thursday evening, I discovered that the harddrive in the vehicle had died. Because of the uncertain history of the old drive, we already had a replacement drive on order; it should arrive early next week. Until then, we will be operating off of a spare that I had for a separate project.

I have spent all of today installing Gentoo on the new drive, and I intend to save a drive image as soon as everything works properly. We have restored all of the old functionality except for image capture. I am currently trying to get the capture software installed without stooping to installing X, but I will if I have to.

UPDATE: I have gotten the cameras to work; I will reboot the computer so that it's running off of wall power and grab a filesystem image so we don't ever have to go through this again.

While I try and get the computer sorted out, Wes, Danny, and a few others have taken the hull to make some final modifications (such as adding a kill switch). I took care of the depth sensor and Ethernet connection problems yesterday. Hopefully, we'll be back in the water tomorrow evening doing some testing. I will be back in the morning to do some finalization of the vision stuff.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

DPRG Picnic – Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:50:00 +0000
Sorry for the lack of posts recently. We were all busy getting stuff ready for the DPRG picnic last Saturday, and I didn't have time to stop and write down what was done. On Friday night, the sub followed the swimlane stripe on the bottom of the Waterview pool perfectly. Various other things were tested, and Wes worked on sonar into the night.

Saturday morning, we packed everything up and headed to the picnic.Unlike previous years, we had the sub running in the pool within 15 minutes of arriving. There were no leakage problems, but the Texas sun limited our runtime to only an hour before things shut down because of being overheated. We took the sub into John's house, and opened up the tube to let it air out while we ate lunch. There were no heat problems for the remainder of the day, probably because it became overcast.

I practiced and demonstrated onsite vision system training, and got satisfactory results off of as few as three images. Several hours later, the vision system showed no signs of breaking down, despite changing lighting conditions. The actual camera is rotated inside its watertight enclosure, so it doesn't line up orthogonally with the vehicle frame when properly secured. I need to add a calibration parameter to the vision system to correct for this.

The sonar guys were trying to track down a glitch in the firmware all day with little success. I understand that since then, they have found and corrected the problem. In the late afternoon, the PIC programmer stopped working, and they retreated to the lab to get things going again.

I have been taking a break after the hecticness, and started working again yesterday by documenting the vision system for the paper and website. Most of the mechanical changes have been made, and we should be back in the water today.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Vision Update – Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:31:00 +0000
We got some good data in the pool yesterday, and I spent today getting the vision system controlling the motors. Tomorrow, I will try to do a complete end-to-end test in the lab with a dummy target, and then it'll be time to test the control systems in the pool. Vision looks to be on schedule, and barring any major catastrophe, should be operational to the point that it can actually score us points by the end of next week.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Water tests – Wed, 05 Jul 2006 07:18:00 +0000
Late yesterday morning, Wes and I took the hull down to the pool for some final leak tests. When we got back up to the lab, Michael was there working with the compass AVR code. The three of us worked most of the day fitting the electronics into the sub and getting everything working. (Side note: DMMs with low batteries read voltages higher than reality). We picked up a few things at Fry's to complete the last few connections, and spent another hour or two debugging problems with the wireless Ethernet equipment and power circuitry. Collin also showed up and got the light detectors working.

At around 21:30, we took the AUV down to the pool for a live power test. Full of electronics and batteries, it was heavy enough to sink until we removed 10 pounds of dead weight that had been attached to the frame. We were also still having some wireless connectivity issues. After about 15 minutes, we squashed the communications bug and put the sub in the water to test the systems. It maneuvers quite well around the pool, and will basically go straight on its own (open loop) if there aren't any significant currents in the water. After an hour of runtime, we pulled the AUV out of the water and took it back up to the lab.

The weight seems about right; the vertical motors can drive the sub underwater without a lot of effort. Most of this test was on the surface, but we did also perform some underwater maneuvering. After the test, the drive motor battery reported a 3/4 charge and the dive motor battery reported a 4/4 charge. The computer and logic battery reported a 2/4 charge, but it was powering the AUV for an hour and twenty minutes instead of simply the hour that the motors were running. All in all, it appears that our runtime for tests will be somewhere between 1.5 and 2 hours.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Compass, Player, Sonar, – Tue, 04 Jul 2006 16:48:00 +0000
Things are really coming together now. Most of the pieces work, and I think we'll actually get this thing in the water today. Michael got the compass reporting values, Wes and Ian got the DAC on the sonar board working, Collin has successfully detected light color and frequency, and I got most of the interior wiring done.

Today's agenda (for me, at least) is to get the computer on the sub back up, and talking to everything. Then, get this thing in the water.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Compass – Mon, 03 Jul 2006 08:21:00 +0000
I managed to get the compass attached to the i2c bus without causing the AVR to hang, but I couldn't read the compass without the RS-485 protocol timing out. I attached the compass via the PWM signal, but have not been able to get satisfactory results. The theoretical resolution of the compass as it is currently configured is 2.7 degrees. This change also seems to have broken the motor controller status notification on boot; the motor controller still works fine. I haven't checked in any of the new code, because it still works less well than what's in the repository.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Leaks, Motors, News – Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:44:00 +0000
After a few minor fixes, the hull appears to be watertight again, as it didn't leak after a 1 hour test. Michael and I dubugged the RS-485 bus, which is now working between the testing PC and the AVR. We have successfully controlled the motors with the computer, and I seem to have stamped out the i2c bug (I hope). I am currently trying to get the compass working on the same bus as the motor controllers, which will probably take the rest of the night. Also, I got this news feed integrated into the front page of auv.utdallas.edu, the official website.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Lots of progress – Sun, 02 Jul 2006 18:15:00 +0000
Lots of work got done yesterday. I got the vision system mostly set up; it is generating values suitable to be fed into a control system for both pipeline recognition and bon detection. Pretty much all of the AVR code is written, but untested. The electronics are wired together on the plate that goes inside the sub, but there are some bugs that still need to be worked out. The sonar system seems to be going well, but I don't know any specifics on that. The hull got tested with various connectors on the bulkhead, and leaked a few mL of water over twenty minutes. Mike thinks he's isolated the problem, and we will be testing again today.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Vision Update – Sat, 01 Jul 2006 14:19:00 +0000
Edge-detect no longer crashes on certain source images. The bug in edge-detect is a reference-tracking issue. Not wanting to debug the massive decision tree that produces the output, I have replaced all of the nontrivial memory management with the Boehm garbage collector. This doesn't solve the problem of the output being poor in edge cases, but it does keep the program from crashing on images it doesn't like, while still maintaining sufficient speed to run inside the vision pipeline.

For the record, attempting to mass free everything yourself using brk causes a segmentation fault. Ignoring free and execing the program after every frame works, but is too slow to be practical in a real-time problem, such as vision.

The new vision code will be in svn as soon as I can move the changes to a clean copy of the source from the one with all of the cruft from trying to deal with this problem.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Fwd: AVR Progress – Sat, 01 Jul 2006 13:53:00 +0000
From Michael, yesterday morning. I understand that he's was working on this most of yesterday, too; I don't know how far along he is right now.

• RS-485 and STX/ETX
• motor control
• depth sense
• battery voltage sense
• a2d that is nonblocking (unlike the avrlib stuff)

• marker dropper
• compass
• kill switch reading
• power control over camera bus
• device presence
• kill relay (???)

Some Background – Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:56:00 +0000
For those of you who happen to stumble across this site without a proper introduction, perhaps I should let you know what this whole thing is about.

I am one of the senior members of the AUV team at the University of Texas at Dallas. We are preparing an entry for AUVSI's 9th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. Fundamentally, we have to make a robotic submarine that performs several tasks underwater completely without human interaction. I will try to explain the various bits we need to do as I talk about the state of the various systems that try to accomplish each task. If you don't want to wait for that, you can read the official mission.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

Welcome – Fri, 30 Jun 2006 18:19:00 +0000
With only a month to go before the competition, I am getting regular inquiries about the progress of the AUV. Rather than having to repeat myself all the time, I will try to post status updates here as often as I can. Our original plan was to have all of the hardware working by July 1. That seems to be unlikely to happen, but we should at least be in the water.
— noreply@blogger.com (kd5bjo)

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