Friday 30 December 2011

Sparkfun's coverage of an autonomous boat / free day.

A small propellor-driven boat with similar electronics to the Sailbot was featured on the front page of SparkFun yesterday. Points of interest include the interface, written in Python and built using the Google Earth backend, also the demo of its mapping capablities provided by depth sensors - if some generous researcher at MUN felt like providing us with the transducer, I'm sure we could make room for this feature. Sparkfun also hosts an annual Autonomous Vechicle Competition, the 2012 comp is June 16th.

Also, Sparkfun's Free Day is Januaray 11th, great time to stock up on a few parts if we can get a pass

[Which reminds me about my own order, can't wait to try out a few of their 8-pin microcontrollers (PICaxe,ATtiny). They come in a variety of small SMD packages which means a pretty tiny footprint and at less than a buck they'd could be a nice replacement for a bunch of discrete components in a control circuit or swarm robot. --Jordan]

Monday 5 December 2011

Launch of blog / first post / tech talk

[So the old PHP News was great, but given that it wasn't frequently used and the site has been updated (Moreso because I just got a new Google phone for Christmas) I thought I'd launch a blog for Sailbot and replace News if all goes well. (Scott, if you'd rather do it another way, give me a shout, the blog has a few cool features like RSS and Atom feeds, we could just integrate with News.).  -- Jordan]

Sailbot presented a tech talk at the IEEE Newfoundland and Labrador Section's Annual General Meeting with distribution of new newsletter, hot off the presses (by that we mean printed at the last minute in the lab). Thanks to all Sailbot members who attended, IEEE:NL for the coffee card and thanks to Dr. Peters for inviting us. If any executive IEEE member hears new developments regarding the McNaughton center, please keep us in mind!

[Read the newsletter here.]

Wednesday 9 November 2011

[Archive/Repost] IEEE: NECEC

Several members attended IEEE's Newfoundland Electrical and Computer Engineering Conference on Novermber 1st, publishing and presenting a paper on our development.

Tuesday 21 June 2011

[Archive/Repost] 2011 International Sailbot Competition, Maryland

We have placed 4th in the 2011 Sailbot competition in Annapolis,Maryland. We were leading in the last event of the long distance race when we suffered mechanical failure upon collision with an anchor chain. We unfortunately insued damages to both the hull and sails forcing the Missus' to resign from the race. Although the ship received enough damage to remove the boat from competition,the Miss's will be improved and sailing with in a week of its return back to Newfoundland. Overall the competition has been a success for the Memorial Sailbot team. Being the first competition for the MUN Sailbot team, we have done exceptional well against more experienced competitors. We contribute are success to are innovative real time operating system and the robust mechanical design of the ship. Are main flaw of the Missus' however was it was designed for high winds and wave conditions. Unfortunately, the competitions had light winds for the majority of the events. From the experience of the competition a new boat will be optimized for lighter wind conditions for competition. With additional funding and the strong work ethic of the MUN Sailbot team, we will be seek to compete in the 2012 Sailbot Competition in Vancouver.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

[Archive/Repost] Completion of first boat

We have reached are goal of mechanically completing the boat. The ship is now a floating vessel. A few team members seem married to her, so we called her 'The Missus'