AMOS Looks Underwater

 Last month's assumption that the o-ring seal on the WeatherBox required improvement proved to be correct. The printed part had tiny imperfections underneath the o-ring that allowed water to slowly leak through. A WeatherBox customer who was using it to observe a muskrat underwater came up with a brilliant solution: he found that using some marine goop (ex. https://www.homedepot.ca/product/amazing-goop-marine-109-4-ml-3-7-oz-/1000183125) in the channel holding the o-ring worked to fill in the small imperfections in the plastic and create a watertight seal. I've built a few WeatherBox enclosures since then with the channel filled with Marine Goop and they have all worked quite well.

To take pictures and video underwater with the 6 foot AMOS surfboard, an extension piece was required to get the WeatherBox below the waterline. The bow of the surfboard where the camera is located is pitched upward at about a 20 degree angle, so this requires a curved extension piece. The creation of this extension piece required a couple of weeks. At first, rendering the model in OpenSCAD took days for my laptop to finish, although later iterations of the model used some 2-D optimizations with extrusions that shortened the rendering time to about 24 hours. The first two model attempts also had small gaps on the side with the largest radius of curvature, which led to leaking. Eventually a working model of the curved extension piece was created:

The extension piece was fitted on AMOS and used to capture this underwater backyard pool video:

Apologies to viewers for the acting talent used in the above video. In Nature Robotics operates on a tight budget. 😉

Coming up next week is the final round of  the 2021 edition of the Ocean Startup Challenge (https://oceanstartupproject.ca/challenge/). In Nature Robotics is in the mix again this year, and will be pitching on Thursday, September 9. 

Ocean Startup Challenge Win!

 The pitch in the Ocean Startup Challenge seemed to go OK last week, and fortunately the judges did not ask any really difficult questions. I wasn't expecting to be one of the top 10 companies, but was still kind of eager to find out the results. On Monday evening my phone rang while I was driving into town to pickup Kirsten from cross country practice. I pulled over and took the call, and was quite excited to find out that In Nature Robotics was one of the winners! As I found out just today when the official announcement was made, there were actually 14 winners chosen, so probably good for me that they decided to pick 40% extra! For a video and list of the winners, check out this link: https://www.oceanstartupchallenge.ca/announcements/. I also did a telephone interview with a fisheries / ocean tech journalist who writes for https://www.saltwire.com/, so there should be a story about me, In Nature Robotics, and AMOS appearing there soon. (EDIT: Here is the link to the story: https://www.saltwire.com/business/local-business/video-cod-collagen-project-and-a-boat-called-amos-east-coast-entrepreneurs-among-winners-of-ocean-startup-challenge-504940/)

The funding from the contest will be used to build a 4th prototype version of AMOS that will be a hybrid between the previous catamaran and surfboard versions. This time I would like to first make a silicone mold and then try using a two-part foam with that. I would also like to construct it so that the electronics boxes are mostly hidden away within the hull, in order to cut down on wind resistance as much as possible, and make things look a bit neater. I would also like to get some other people using and testing AMOS, to get their feedback and criticisms, and last I'm hoping to do a bit of R&D to work on adding some tech for discrete sample collection and underwater video.

I'll find out more details about the Ocean Startup program and funding next week. In the mean time I'm working on creating a 3D-printed container to house a small solenoid valve. It would be used for collecting physical water samples at different depths. I would like to fit a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) module, some batteries, and a microcontroller in there to allow AMOS to communicate with it wirelessly and tell it to open its inlet valve after a certain length of time. Then AMOS could lower the bottle into the water on a rope to the required depth and wait for the valve to open for a few seconds before pulling the bottle up again. A fancier version might also include a pressure sensor to allow the valve to open at a pre-determined depth. 

Foggy False Obstacles

This past week has been mostly filled with preparations for my upcoming pitch in the Ocean Startup Challenge this Thursday (the 24th), but I did find a bit of time to get out for a quick test on Monday morning. The air temperature was quite cold that morning (a low of 0 °C the night before) so there was a lot of fog on the water when AMOS was starting out:

Similar to what happened a couple of years ago on a foggy day (although with a different LiDAR model) AMOS was detecting a number of false obstacles due to the laser light from the LiDAR reflecting back from the water vapour. AMOS would turn in place until it found a "fog-free" direction and then proceed for a while before changing direction again. This slowed things down a bit at first, but soon the sun burned the fog away and AMOS sped from one end of Kelly's Creek to the other, a distance of almost 6 km in about 80 minutes:

I had to work pretty hard to tow AMOS back to the van in order to get back home in time for lunch and work at Measurand.

My slides and presentation are ready for the pitch on Thursday, although I'm meeting with some people tomorrow to get their feedback, so they might still need a bit more modification. Anyone who is interested can view the slides and speaking notes here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1NDSK35QObOzhbu_-wzTQwxbSCig7iita

Ocean Startup Challenge!

 There was a big announcement today for In Nature Robotics: we were one of 31 companies out of 158 applicants to be picked for the next round of the Ocean Startup Challenge: http://www.oceanstartupchallenge.ca/announcements/. Starting this Friday, there will be a week of presentations and workshops to get ready for a final pitch presentation, sometime between September 22 and September 24. The 31 companies will be competing for 10 prizes of $25k plus in-kind support. It seems sort of similar to what we went through back in May for the Volta competition; except more of an overall ocean theme. 

I took a couple of days off from AMOS this week to go on a fun family camping trip at Spednic Lake. It would have been nice to try out AMOS there, but the van was packed tightly to the roof with camping supplies, so it wasn't possible. I did manage to get some 3D models of the new WeatherBox put together and tested for water-tightness though. Here is a picture of the component parts (no more little nuts or bolts required!!!) and a picture of the put-together unit (minus the interior locking piece):

The only thing that needs to be modified is that the camera board is recessed a bit too far inside the enclosure, so that you can see tiny smudges of black (from the enclosure) in the corners of the field of view:

(Please ignore the terrible state of this lawn. 😀)

To fix this, I can try to either (i) elevate the level of the camera board inside the enclosure, or (ii) trim down the thickness of the enclosure a bit. 

I have also been working on re-wiring the electronic speed controller (ESC) to situate it behind the propeller. Unfortunately though, I think I may have broken one or more of the wires going into either the ESC or the propeller motor today, as it was functioning sporadically, depending on how I moved the wire around. I'll try a replacement motor tomorrow, and if that doesn't work I'll try replacing the ESC.