Underwater stuff

On Thursday we did a big pool trial testing out some new human-robot interaction software that Junaed, in particular, has been developing. In addition, we tested out a couple on not-yet-autonomous surface vehicles. Everything went very well.

Almost all the students and employees in my lab were able to make it, so we have a biggish crew of about 16 people plus a few additional visitors and family members. This proved very helpful since we had a lot of gear to carry in an deploy, including scuba equipment for people who could stay down and either observe the robot or interact with it.

The boats also fared nicely and I think, for once, every single experiment came off well. That seems impossibly good; I hope nothing got lost or damaged on the way home.

One of the great side benefits of in-the-field robotics experiments is that they are excellent social events bonding everybody together by the shared objectives (and occasional hardships). It's a bit like a sports team in that way. In fact, I think the level mutual support and good sprits seems to be at a local maximum and it's an honor to be part of it. Of course the downside is that such substantial effort and infrastructure is required to do this kind of work, but that kind of tradeoff is the way of the world.