Meet Jata, Employee #1!

Thanks to some funding support from Venture For Canada, In Nature Robotics is pleased to announce that Jata MacCabe will be the company's first ever employee, working as a sales and marketing intern for the May to September summer term of this year. Jata is a multi-scholarship student and is currently completing her 3rd year of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick, specializing in information systems. She has also completed a number of business and marketing courses and has extensive experience building and promoting digital communication platforms for small businesses, which should serve her well in her upcoming work term.

In less exciting news, I got the pontoons for the Cat-AMOS nicely sanded to a smooth finish, and visited a metal fabricator to inquire about possibly getting them encased in aluminum. The pontoons as built could not be encased in aluminum, since any welding process would certainly melt them, but it would be possible to make a twin-hull aluminum Catamaran that could be filled with some sort of spray foam, for buoyancy in the event of a leak or damage. The only problem is that any sort of aluminum structure of the size required to hold the solar panel and electronics boxes would weigh at least 35 lbs, probably more. The current surfboard design is only about 29 lbs, with the battery, electronics boxes, and everything included. So I guess I'll be sticking with a fiberglass shell for the foam pontoons. Hopefully I'll take better care around the edges this time to make sure that everything is nice and smooth without any fiberglass splinters. 

I also got more done on the ArcGIS-based mapping software for viewing diagnostic files recorded from AMOS. The following video is an example of the interface for viewing where the boat traveled, and what its internal temperature, voltage, and heading was at any given point of time.