Changes

2022 will be the first OCRobotX Team event, and will present significant challenges. Primarily, raising the money to purchase the material items required, and travel costs associated with the competition in Australia. Moreover, the basic task of putting together a complete engineering group, and designing from startup the primary WAM-V Subsystems, coupled with the AI development, will likely force the team to confine itself to the Maritime Platform only and forego the UAV component of the competition.  The WAM-V focus only, should not be considered an under-achievement by any means, considering the short ramp-up.

2022 will be the first OCRobotX Team event, and will present significant challenges. Primarily, raising the money to purchase the material items required, and travel costs associated with the competition in Australia. Moreover, the basic task of putting together a complete engineering group, and designing from startup the primary WAM-V Subsystems, coupled with the AI development, will likely force the team to confine itself to the Maritime Platform only and forego the UAV component of the competition.  The WAM-V focus only, should not be considered an under-achievement by any means, considering the short ramp-up.

===Major Focus Areas===

===Major Focus Areas===

There are four major essential areas that must be designed, integrated, and proven, prior to any major sensor package development. Namely, the Ground Control Station (GCS), Onboard Mission Manager (MM), and the radio inter-connectivity frameworks—long range WIFI—the GCS and MM require the greatest amount of planning, design and testing.  This design and testing should include forward thinking analysis of sensor capability and expansion.  Secondarily, propulsion, power distribution and power management systems have almost equal importance to the overall success of the project mission rounding out the four areas.  The goal is to develop a robust operating system design, scalable to handle the addition of sensors such as LIDAR, SONAR, RADAR, GPS/IMU, HD Vision and perception, as well as environmental weather, set and drift indicators/detectors, and propulsion control and feedback.  The lack of rock-solid navigation, and positional uncertainty problems have plagued many of the RobotX competitors in the past.  While the EE/CS team focuses on the computing infrastructure being constructed and tested. The ME teams will focus on the propulsion design and testing with two major goals: designing the propulsion control system to function under direct remote control—essential for initial deployment and placement of the platform—and secondly, semi-autonomous control via the GCS and MM, using waypoint concepts integrated with GPS and platform drift.  Every attempt will be made to prove algorithm by algorithm performance, first with simulation, then a technique called ‘hardware-in-the-loop’. Hardware-in-the-loop consists on systematically replacing simulated sections, piece by piece, with real hardware proving the stimulus processing is reliable. Designing the MM this way allows for Sim-to-Hardware swap if a Subsystem fails and trouble-shooting in the field needs to take place.  This technique also allows a complete system and pseudo-mission rehearsal prior to each in-water event.

There are four major essential areas that must be designed, integrated, and proven, prior to any major sensor package development. Namely, the Ground Control Station (GCS), Onboard Mission Manager (MM), and the radio inter-connectivity frameworks—long range WIFI—the GCS and MM require the greatest amount of planning, design and testing.  This design and testing should include forward thinking analysis of sensor capability and expansion.  Secondarily, propulsion, power distribution and power management systems have almost equal importance to the overall success of the project mission rounding out the four areas.   

The goal is to develop a robust operating system design, scalable to handle the addition of sensors such as LIDAR, SONAR, RADAR, GPS/IMU, HD Vision and perception, as well as environmental weather, set and drift indicators/detectors, and propulsion control and feedback.  The lack of rock-solid navigation, and positional uncertainty problems have plagued many of the RobotX competitors in the past.  While the EE/CS team focuses on the computing infrastructure being constructed and tested.  

The ME teams will focus on the propulsion design and testing with two major goals: designing the propulsion control system to function under direct remote control—essential for initial deployment and placement of the platform—and secondly, semi-autonomous control via the GCS and MM, using waypoint concepts integrated with GPS and platform drift.   

Every attempt will be made to prove algorithm by algorithm performance, first with simulation, then a technique called ‘hardware-in-the-loop’. Hardware-in-the-loop consists on systematically replacing simulated sections, piece by piece, with real hardware proving the stimulus processing is reliable. Designing the MM this way allows for Sim-to-Hardware swap if a Subsystem fails and trouble-shooting in the field needs to take place.  This technique also allows a complete system and pseudo-mission rehearsal prior to each in-water event.

 

===Previous Experience, Lessons Learned===

===Previous Experience, Lessons Learned===

Several of the RobotX team members in late 2019, designed and constructed a CrawlerBot (see http://ocrobotx.org/mediawiki/index.php/Holonomic_Robotic_Platform#Project_Purpose) using holonomic drive techniques in anticipation of using that experiential knowledge as an approach vector to design a more complex WAM-V propulsion system.  It is apparent to the experienced team members that a combination of straightforward linear propulsion systems that can be mechanically articulated into a holonomic drive system presents the best of both options: speed when needed, and fine-grained maneuverability required to complete complex navigation maneuvers.

Several of the RobotX team members in late 2019, designed and constructed a CrawlerBot (see http://ocrobotx.org/mediawiki/index.php/Holonomic_Robotic_Platform#Project_Purpose) using holonomic drive techniques in anticipation of using that experiential knowledge as an approach vector to design a more complex WAM-V propulsion system.  It is apparent to the experienced team members that a combination of straightforward linear propulsion systems that can be mechanically articulated into a holonomic drive system presents the best of both options: speed when needed, and fine-grained maneuverability required to complete complex navigation maneuvers.