A Catacomb Excursion and New Research Outlooks

Today's excursion brought the Mudd and CalPoly ICEX team together in St. Paul's Catacombs.  This chamber of the deceased extends far below the ground, a feat hew out of solid rock.  Within its recesses we found burial sites carved with headrests for their occupants, and we even witnessed smaller carved recesses for infants.

Naturally, though, we've also been laying additional research groundwork.  Currently, we're preparing for the addition of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and datalogger in the robot's hull.  After filtering and implementing a sensor fusion algorithm, an IMU can provide the orientation (roll, pitch, yaw) of at a particular time.  Having purchased the sensors, our first task has been to calibrate the 3 degree-of-freedom (DOF) accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes.  Furthermore, after an underwater deployment, we intend to upload the logged data into our software and time-sync it with the remaining data.  We've added a block diagram of the calibration below with much more to come: