Monday 23 September 2013

Wait... What?


Photo Credit: Ryan Williamson 


That is correct, St. John's with not a lick of wind.  After rigging up the boat and carting her down to Long Pond to shake the cobwebs out of the system -both mechanically and electrically- we found ourselves presented with an unusual situation: No Wind.  Although the mechanical elements could be tested manually without wind by using the hand controller, elements such as the GPS and the Autonomous code need vessel movement to invoke any response.  Never for lack of an idea, Austin and Gordo volunteered to tow Arctica around the pond to generate some sensor data  that would give us insight into how the boat is "thinking".

It was a strange sight all-in-all, a sailboat being towed around by a green punt, but a successful evening of tow-testing.



Thursday 19 September 2013

Out of the Box

Following a long rest after the 2013 competition, the Arctica is out of her box.  A preliminary test of her components revealed that all-systems-are-go and that testing can begin on Long Pond.  The preliminary testing is aimed at debugging the errors in the code that were discovered at the competition in Boston.  Once these bugs have been eradicated, the code will be refined to improve both our autonomous navigation and sail handling.

Stay tuned for future developments!