Ramius survives, AQUA 1.0 OK, stereo OK too

News on the amphibious robot we have dubbed Ramius: version 2 of the AQUA platform. I had previously noted that we were having some problems with the hardware and the weather. The weather eventually improved and while the visibility has remained corrupted, the tests went ahead successfully. We used 3 scuba dive teams to ferry the robot down to 120 feet, take stops along the way to calibrate the strain guage used for depth measurement, and had one team devoted to keeping an eye on the other cognitively loaded diving team(s). The procedure was carefully planned and included precautions in case the robot imploded, or for ditching the gera in case of emergency. After all that, the whole thing came and went very quickly.

We also validated some important new hovering and station keeping behaviors by the robot: various ways of staying on one spot and keeping an eye on things. Some behaviors didn't work well, or couldn't be properly tested. The sub-optimal weather not only hindered visibility, but also led to a high rate of sea sickness. The rate at which we lost fiber optic cables was a bit alarming, but the core requirements of the test went well.