Murphy's Law Relents for Just One Day

After two months where it seemed everything that could go wrong did go wrong, Murphy's Law relented for just one day and we managed to get five boats simultaneously sensing in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. 

Our setup footprint and setup time has steadily decreased over the course of our stay in Doha, due to many factors:

• Rental of a SUV so equipment does not have to be unloaded every night
• Boxes to compactly store and safely transport the shrouds and magic plates
• Purchase of a smaller antenna
• Success in finding a deep cycle battery and inverter for power

Below is a picture of the reduced set of supplies we unload at the Corniche each morning.

The weather looked very promising this morning: small waves headed directly toward the shore, making for easy robot retrieval in the event of a failure resulting in loss of control. We got to work setting things up and soon were pushing boats into the water:

After a couple phone reboots, we had all 5 boats running happily in the water and got to sit back, relax, and take pictures. Here are some much anticipated photos of a 5 boat deployment!

Pictures of the new boat, technical details soon ..

Smoke and Slow Progress

We put two of the latest boats into the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf) this morning.

Unfortunately, within 1 minute, one of them was smoking, with a key part of the electronics unexpectedly overheating.   We had about a 20min wait while the disabled boat floated to shore.

We turned the speed down on the second boat and managed to keep it from over-heating.  The boat moved slowly at the lower speed and had some trouble with the winds and waves, but it did work.

A tourist taxi boat did its best to run the little guy over, but failed.

All in all it was slow progress, in more ways than one, but it was progress.  If we can stop the FET over-heating, we'll have more pictures of sunny Doha on Sunday.

Testing in Doha to begin Thursday

The boats will be going into the water near the Corniche in Doha, Qatar on Thursday morning.  This will be the first real test of the new boat.  We hope the amazing view they will have won't give them stage fright.   Stay tuned.

Here is the boat, all ready to go:

In fact, the whole fleet is ready to go:

Demo workshop with teachers from Shadyside Academy

On Thursday December 13th, three members of the Platypus team George, Abhinav, and David conducted our first High School training with Shadyside Academy. George and Abhinav went over the basics and we then proceeded to nearby Squaw Run Park for on the water training. All said, the training went extremely well. The boat even managed to break through some morning ice that was approx 1/4 inch thick! Shadyside Academy has a demo boat to utilize prior to getting their new boat which is in production now.

Platypus featured in Pittsburgh Business Times and in Robotics Trends

Check out the 4th page of Pittsburgh Business Times in this link and the slideshow here.
Article in Robotics Trends here.

Energy Inc Conference and Trade Show

On Tuesday the 14^th of August, thanks to Innovation Works who sponsored our attendance, the Platypus team took part in the Energy Inc Conference and Trade Show held at the David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. This event catered to many different investors, business executives as well as various energy companies.

The Keynote speaker for the event was Charles McConnell, the assistant secretary for fossil energy in the US Department of Energy, who is also a CMU Graduate. His address focused on the energy market in western Pennsylvania.

Many different companies had booth’s at the trade show. The focus was on energy sources whether it be gas, oil, coal wind or solar energy. Most of the people in attendance were investors, manufactures and service providers that support the creation of the regions energy marketplace.

Platypus had set up a booth where we spoke about the solar recharging station that is currently being developed. This solar recharging station will eliminate most of the need for human interaction with the boats and reduce the amount of maintenance needed. After the boats autonomously sample a body of water, they can return to their solar recharge station or as nicknamed the “Doghouse”, where solar energy will be used to recharge the batteries.

The attendees of the show were very interested in our boats and their capabilities. The Platypus team got a chance to met a lot of interesting people and made some new contacts to follow up on.

After a long day of pimping out the boats, team member Chris headed straight to the bar the second it opened, although another member Balajee was nowhere to be found.

Will we find out the reason for Balajee’s mysterious disappearance?
Stay Tuned for updates on the blog to find out!