Stuck In The Mud

AMOS did another 20 km of traveling around Woolastook this past week, bringing its yearly total up to 130 km. I'm hoping to maybe reach 200 km before things get too cold. A couple of improvements were made this week also:

1. Fixed up the LiDAR code so that it now seems to be working as intended. 
2. Shifted the position of the sensor deployment arm and made a small fitting to better route some electrical cables on the back deck, so the sensors no longer become entangled. 

I also ordered some stepper motors and drivers for making an anchor deployment mechanism. Having an anchor would not have helped today though, as the water level in the Kelly Creek waterway was unusually low. That happens sometimes, depending on the level of flow downstream through the Mactaquac Dam. What it meant for AMOS though, was that its waypoint in the northeastern corner of the route was probably located in the middle of a mudflat. AMOS was unable to turn properly at about 12:50 pm today near that location, and it kept trying until 3:00 pm, when the program was set to stop traveling anyway. If AMOS had a depth sensor it would help avoid those sorts of situations...

I cleaned off my iPhone camera lens and tried to record some video today too. Here are a couple of the best ones. For some reason YouTube really seems to degrade the quality, so I'm going to try posting the files directly here this time:

Good closeup of AMOS.

Sensors getting deployed.