Travels to Malta

We've made it to Malta! It was a long 24 hours of travel but we didn't run into any major problems. I had a scare at the SFO airport when my terminal was closed due to a security threat and I heard all flights were grounded. I was sent to another terminal with a huge security line, but I made it through the line in time and my flight left only half an hour late.

View of San Francisco Bay from my flight

I met Zoë and Ian at LAX and we got the four suitcases containing the ROV and tools checked for the flight. We had a long flight to Zurich and made it to Malta right as the sun was setting.

My first view of Malta! 

We were relieved to see someone at the airport waiting with our names on signs. After we made it to our apartment, the three of us went on a walk to the harbor. We came back to our apartment to find Chris and Api and all headed to bed exhausted.

Hi! I'm Katie, a Computer Science major at Cal Poly about to start my fifth year. Unlike everyone else, I haven't been involved with ICEX before, so I don't really know what I'm getting myself into. But I'm excited to find out! I'll be working on data visualization and generally making myself useful.

Zoë originally approached my about this project a year and a half ago and I can't believe it's actually happening. I've been reading the blog from ICEX 2013 to try and prepare myself. I've never been to Europe so I'm stoked to see Malta and get involved with this research. My bags are packed and I leave for the airport in an hour. See you soon Malta! 

Hello!

Hello! My name is Ian and I'm a student from Cal Poly. My goals for the week are to work on visualization software, acquire GIS and bathymetry data from Timmy, and see whether underwater video is sufficient to do SfM 3D reconstructions.

I'll also be taking an annoying number of photos and videos of the deployments. Assuming a reliable internet connection, I'll be posting a lot of those here!

If I have to be honest, my ulterior motive is to go to St. George's cave, tie a rock to the ROV, see what's at the bottom. The depths are calling.

Hi! My name is Apoorva, and I'm part of the LAIR at Harvey Mudd. This summer, I've been working with Chris Clark on AUV path planning for efficient mapping.

As Chris alluded to in his earlier post, sonar imagery works kind of like shining a flashlight in a dark room - while objects in the room do light up and become visible, they do cast shadows, which may obscure details behind them. What this means is that when collecting sonar data, you need imagery from different vantage points to get a complete picture.

I've been developing a system by which the AUV can look at the images it has collected, figure out where the unknown areas are, and compute the vantage points that will fill in these gaps. The robot can then plan its path around these vantage points to efficiently map the environment.

The majority of this work has being done in simulation so far, but I'm looking forward to testing the system in the field in Malta!


Apoorva Sharma
Harvey Mudd College
Engineering '16

Our preliminary work at Catalina Island has shown we have been able to integrate a BlueView 2D imaging sonar with our Iver2 AUV. The image below shows the AUV diving on a mission to map out a local shipwreck.

The missions have been successful, and we have been working mapping them with standard mapping algorithms and filters (e.g. Kalman Filtering). One partially constructed map is shown below. The light green line depicts the AUV trajectory. Dark blue areas are not observed due to the sonar being side mounted and limited in beam width. The wreck can be seen coming through from the bottom left scans that have been fused within elevation map. Acoustic shadows are clearly visible, indicating the need for multiple points of sensor vantage points, (and hence intelligent planning).

Welcome to ICEX 2015! This year we plan to test our AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) shipwreck mapping system and collect preliminary data sets while in Malta. In particular, we hope to characterize our 2D imaging sonar measurements and construct our first maps of Maltese wrecks.
We hope to post results and findings throughout the next week, so feel free to follow us.

Chris Clark, Director of the Lab for Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics, Harvey Mudd College.

Students from Harvey Mudd College and Cal Poly are heading to Malta with faculty members to deploy underwater robots with the purpose of mapping coastal shipwrecks and developing new technology for marine archeology.  Being located in the Mediterranean Sea between continental Europe and northern Africa, the island nation of Malta and its coastal waters are home to a large number of historical wrecks.  Organized through a joint International Computer Engineering Experience (ICEX), the students will collaborate with Dr. Timmy Gambin, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Malta and faculty members from Cal Poly and Harvey Mudd College in addition to further international partners.  The project goals are to develop an Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) system for intelligent shipwreck search, mapping and visualization. The 2015 ICEX team includes: Katherine Davis (Senior, Computer Science, Cal Poly),  Ian Dunn (Senior, Software Engineering, Cal Poly), and Apoorva Sharma (Junior, Computer Science, Harvey Mudd College)  joined by  Harvey Mudd College faculty member, Professor Christopher Clark of Engineering and Cal Poly faculty member, Associate Professor Zoë Wood of Computer Science.

Some related links:

http://www.hmc.edu/lair/

http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood/

https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/timmygambin