Archive of posts from 2013

  • Stingray Testing at Canyonview Pool

    Posted on Nov 26, 2013

    featured image Stingray Team has been hard at work testing and refining the controls system of our underwater vehicle. We’ve been working on getting the Stingray to auto-stabilize at a given depth and swim in a dead-reckoned lawnmower pattern. Current testing has been done in UCSD’s Canyonview pool, but we are close to moving the Stingray to the ocean to test in a realistic environment. The video below shows the Stingray descending to a user-specified depth while auto-stabilizing. In addition to develop...

  • Engineers For Exploration Accepted into Intel Cornell Cup

    Posted on Nov 25, 2013

    featured image This week, our Terrestrial Vehicle project was accepted into the Intel Cornell Cup! Cornell Cup presented by Intel is a college-level embedded design competition that ends with a two-day event at Walt Disney World. For our project, we will be working closely with the California Wolf Center to develop a mobile platform for capturing close-quarters footage of the wolves at night. This platform will allow the researchers at the Wolf Center to capture unique, rare footage that will enhance thei...

  • Celebrating the CSE Department's 25th Anniversary

    Posted on Nov 17, 2013

    featured image Engineers for Exploration was present to celebrate UC San Diego’s CSE Department 25th Anniversary. We had a booth to show off our projects, as well as setting up the balloon for a live demo. Walking out with the balloon We set up the balloon to float over the Warren Bear, and streamed the balloon’s view over a Google Hangout to our booth inside. Snapshot from the Google Hangout Finally, I took some video of the balloon being blown around by the wind to show the balloon’s stabilizati...

  • Balloon in the Field

    Posted on Oct 14, 2013

    featured image As the Engineers for Exploration Summer REU program drew to a close, we set out for one last mission: to perform an aerial survey of a restoration zone in Del Dios Gorge. Our collaborator from the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy, David O’Connor, wanted to investigate the regrowth of native plants in the area where invasive eucalyptus trees had been taken out. With our balloon surveying platform and structure from motion reconstructions, we can capture a snapshot of the area at one time....

  • Balloon Test at Sea

    Posted on Aug 22, 2013

    featured image One of the main intended uses of the Stabilized Aerial Camera Platform is to perform surveys of marine mammals. After a successful deployment in Warren Mall, we were ready to test the new setup at sea. Our goals for this deployment were to test the effectiveness of a polarizing filter in getting clear photos of underwater animals, and to validate gimbal stabilization while subjected to jerkiness from the bobbing boat. Inflating the balloon Walking the balloon to the boat Heading ou...

  • Balloon Test in Warren Mall

    Posted on Aug 14, 2013

    featured image (Photography by Jennifer Batryn and Lauren Nishizaki) This summer, we’ve been hard at work redesigning the stabilized aerial camera platform. In our past tests towing the balloon from a boat to survey marine wildlife, the gimbal was not able to move quickly enough to counteract strong gusting motions, and the rigging prevented the balloon’s sail from deploying completely. To improve the stability of the balloon platform, we switched to a new gimbal that is lighter and better balanced, which ...

  • The Tiger Tracker Begins

    Posted on Jul 22, 2013

    featured image (Photography by Jennifer Batryn) A while back, a few researchers had set up a camera rig in the lion enclosure at the zoo, Dr. Lance Miller had told us. He had cautioned them the cameras were too close to the ground, and like most cats, lions tend to be very curious about new things in their environments. It turns out, Lance was right. The next morning all but a few scraps of the cameras were left. As we set up our own camera system in the tiger’s enclosure, we hoped our system would not bef...

  • Engineers For Exploration REU Summer 2013

    Posted on Jul 15, 2013

    featured image This summer we're proud to host the following students here at UCSD for the Engineers for Exploration REU Summer Program. These students form the core team of the Engineers for Exploration this summer and will be driving E4E projects into the field. Jennifer Batryn, Cal Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo Jennifer Batryn will be finishing her 5th year as a mechanical engineering student at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Her academic interests focus on robotics and their ap...

  • Engineers for Exploration Featured in the UCSD Guardian

    Posted on May 31, 2013

    featured image The Engineers for Exploration program has been featured in the UCSD Guardian! Below is an excerpt of the article published. For the entire article, please follow the link here. The UCSD National Geographic Society Engineers for Exploration program, founded by research scientist Albert Yu-Min Lin, is promoting scientific discovery through real-world engineering. Written by Stacey Chien 28 May 2013 Within the walls of UCSD's Atkinson Hall, in a design prototyping lab on the first floor, va...

  • CondorCam CAD Model

    Posted on May 11, 2013

    featured image We’ve been working on the mechanical design for the CondorCam’s shell. The above model is based on a GPS unit currently used to track condors, which was provided to us by researchers at the California Condor Conservation We are currently modifying this preliminary design to better suit the specifications of our system, including optimizing the surface area in order to incorporate a solar energy harvesting solution.

  • Terrestrial Vehicle Shell

    Posted on Apr 24, 2013

    featured image We’ve been working on developing a protective solution for the terrestrial vehicle, namely protecting components from biting and scent-marking from the wolves. Several design constraints had to be considered for this to work and be effective. We needed a durable solution, one that would prevent the casing from cracking and potentially become an ingestion hazard for the wolves. Any pieces and components from the vehicle needs to stay on the vehicle to prevent accidental consumption by the wolv...

  • Hold Your Breath! This is just the beginning....

    Posted on Apr 22, 2013

    featured image We have been working on some structure from motion algorithms to try to recreate historical objects found off of the coast of Tobago. Here are some first attempts at reconstructions. Click on an image below to see a rough 3D model of the object. Edit: The more people who tried to navigate these models the more I realized how hard they were to navigate on other platforms, please see the bottom of the page for a video of me navigating them on my machine. I will leave them up rather than take t...

  • Triton Day Launch

    Posted on Apr 16, 2013

    featured image Triton Day is UCSD’s day to show off to new admits what we’re all about, so we took the opportunity to send up the balloon. Here’s some imagery we got. We also stitched together some of our images to get an ultra high resolution image with a lot of detail as well as a large perspective.

  • "It's quiet like a ninja, and slow like a turtle."

    Posted on Apr 13, 2013

    featured image The Camera Trap Team just got the x10 Ninja Pan-Tilt turret to experiment with. After playing with it a bit, we discovered 2 things: it’s VERY quiet, and VERY slow. The quiet part is great for the camera trap, but the speed could be an issue. For long range shots, it should be great though. The picture above is of the x10 “Ninja Turtle” turret undergoing logic analysis. The idea is that we will replace the antenna and remote control that came with the x10 with our own control system. By doin...

  • New Website!

    Posted on Mar 31, 2013

    Logo of E4E and test for alt system! Engineers for Exploration is currently moving to this sweet new website. Updates soon!