Hi from Harvey Mudd

Hi!

My name is Benjamin Chasnov and I am a Freshman from Harvey Mudd. I’m definitely leaning towards majoring in Engineering. I’m from Hong Kong; I was born there and has lived there for my entire life. From 2009 to 2012, my high school robotics team competed in several Marine Advanced Technology Education Center (MATE) ROV Competitions. We built a different ROV each year to complete different timed underwater missions. Building, testing, and operating those ROVs really inspired me to continue exploring the underwater world during my time in college, so here I am!

The strong emphasis on interdisciplinary work in ICEX program is exactly what I’m excited for. The technical aspects of underwater robots—software, electronics and mechanics—are definitely what excite me the most. But what I consider to be the most valuable thing an engineer can learn is to integrate all aspects that will affect making decisions in the field—social, cultural and political. The ICEX project will certainly be an invaluable learning experience, and will certainly help my future career as an aspiring engineer. I’m also really excited to learn more about Maltese culture—the food, the language, the architecture, the politics. From previous blog posts, I read that there is a fair amount of interaction with the locals, which is fantastic!

I can’t wait to meet the Cal Poly team this January and can’t wait for all the intense ROV work in the coming months.

Hey ICEX 2013

Hi all,

My name is Spencer Woodworth and I am a Senior Computer Science major at Cal Poly. I am eager to begin collecting data, spending time with the team, and experiencing Malta and Sicily. I am exhilarated since this will be my first time traveling outside of the United States and I am excited for many hands-on engineering experiences.

 

My contributions to the team will include working on the ROV’s stereo vision so that we can obtain significantly finer surface detail than in prior ICEX expeditions. The images will be captured using two GoPro cameras mounted to the ROV. I believe that the high-quality 3D information will make for a much more immersive digital model, so I am thrilled to contribute.

I have spent my last two summers interning at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. My work involved researching and implementing telemetric systems for high-frequency energy and temperature data. This experience collecting and analyzing large datasets will allow me to assist several of my teammates in their work.

I am looking forward to learning more about robotics and the ICEX program will be a great environment to do so. I am also looking forward to the morning runs that Erik mentioned in a previous post. While I am enjoying my winter break, I can’t wait for it to end, so that I can begin my work with the rest of the team.

Continuing our Harvey-Mudd Hellos

Hello everyone,

I'm Joshua Vasquez, a Harvey Mudd Junior Engineering major, and I'm thrilled to join this year's research excursion both to Sicily and Malta.  I too am new to ICEX, but I'm ready to fire away at a bold new robotics task!

I spent my last summer writing sensor drivers for small accelerometers and gyroscopes, and I integrated them into a ROS package for easy access through other ROS-integrated software (http://www.ros.org/wiki/bosch_drivers).

For this expedition, Lauren and I will be adding new temperature sensor hardware into the existing system, and we hope to cleanly integrate the logging hardware into the existing software framework. As I continue my research with ICEX, I hope both to nourish my understanding of embedded systems and to develop a healthy coding style for large-scale data-logging robot systems. I'm also jazzed at the chance to learn more about the mechanics of the SLAM algorithm.

For fun I enjoy hiking, biking, and electrical DIY projects. I've (alas!) spent far too long voiding my warranty for most electronics! From their remains, though, I enjoy making home-made (low-cost!) remote-control projects.

Greetings To All!!!

Hello all, my name is Cecilia Cadenas I am a 4th year Computer Engineering Major in Cal Poly SLO. I am very excited about this project and all that it entails. I am originally from Jalisco, Mexico and when I was 10 my family immigrated to Rio Vista, a really small town here in California.

Since my first year in college I have been involved with outreach through different organizations and this year I was elected as the outreach coordinator for a club on campus where I organize different workshops and tutoring hours for different elementary and middle schools here in SLO. I think getting young kids interested in engineering and education is crucial. I am very excited to be the lead for outreach and getting to work with the kids from Malta as well as the kids from Pacheco. I will be working on the curriculum and trying to get a workshop so that the kids can begin to understand more about robots. I am really interested to see how the kids in Malta compare to the kids here when interacting with us and our workshop.

This past summer I interned for Raytheon in the software department and will be returning next summer to do a second internship there. I was able to learn more about embedded systems and how to work in a team enviroment. I hope to use what I learn there as well as what I have learned in my classes to help with  the management of the ROV and integrating the biological sensors. I will be focusing and researching the temperature sensor and ways to integrate it with the ROV.

I am really looking forward for everything that this program has to offer since it will be my first time traveling somewhere besides Mexico. I am excited about getting to know more about the ROV, the process to acquire the data, the graphics, and all the experiences I will gain through this awesome opportunity.

More greetings from Harvey Mudd

Hello all,
My name is Alistair Dobke.  I am a junior computer science major at Harvey Mudd College.  In the past I’ve worked with land and air robots so I am excited to “take the dive” into underwater robots.  

I have been working on interfacing the ROV and sonar with ROS (www.ros.org) a system used worldwide by research groups large and small.  Along with making tasks such as time synchronized data logging and autonomous control easier, I hope to add some new capabilities such as data logging with two sonars at the same time.

Outside of class I enjoy playing soccer, making music, and pretending to be an engineering major.  I enjoy traveling and am excited to explore the Mediterranean, meet the rest of the team, and of course make some cool maps.

Hello from Harvey Mudd!

Hello all -

My name is Lauren Lieu and I am a senior engineering major at Harvey Mudd with a background in image processing and robotics. I'm interested in controls, microprocessors and signal processing so I would like to get involved in all kinds of ROV caretaking, path planning and data analysis/mapping along the way. My roles for this project include working on additional sensor hardware for the ROV, integrating pressure and temperature sensors into the system so we can take in more information about the surrounding cistern environments.

I studied abroad in Granada (Andalucía, Spain) for a semester, and had an incredible time traveling on my own. Because of this, I am thrilled about the opportunity for a combined cultural/technical experience and cannot wait to go on this trip for ICEX! After scouring the blogs from previous years, I am looking forward to lots of things: cultural, travel-related, technical and all else - this includes patching up unforeseen robot problems on the fly (with epoxy and electrical tape, the engineering band-aids for everything), roving all over to find sites to do data collection and mapping, trying Maltese cuisine (rabbit?) and undoubtedly getting lost/attempting to use my Spanish-to-pass-for-Italian.

I look forward to meeting the entire ICEX team in the coming months, and having a great time working together!

Continuing The Family Tradition!

My name is Vanessa Forney and I am a junior at Cal Poly, majoring in Computer Science. My interest in ICEX comes from participating in the Water Ways research project (with Amanda Erb) and from my sister's (Christina Forney) participation in the ICEX program two years ago.

I am looking forward to snorkeling in the Mediterranean Sea, exploring underwater cisterns in person, and experiencing a new culture.
I am excited about meeting people with different perspectives and challenging myself to grow and learn in a foreign environment!

Below are some screen shots from the Water Ways research project, funded by CREU (Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates). These are the images of the M'dina Cathedral Sacristy based on the data taken from the ICEX 2012 trip. The program, written in WebGL, reads the vertices and texture coordinates from a file. Users can interact with the cistern using the arrow keys (rotation) and page up/down keys (zoom in/out). You can see our blog here: http://calpoly-creu.blogspot.com/.

Participating in the ICEX program will allow me to continue the work I'm doing with the 3D models in my research project. I look forward to working with other students  and being a part of the ICEX 2013 team! If you can help secure my spot for the trip by facilitating additional funding, please contact Zoe Wood at zwood@calpoly.edu.

-Vanessa