Cool Robots at Dartmouth College

\|<< \|< July 27, 2005 >\| >>\|
What with the fog that rolled in yesterday and has been broken only now and again for less than half an hour, the whole world outside the landmarks of camp is bathed in a monotonous sea of white. There are times when the horizon and sky blend seemlessly together, and even the features in the snow before your feet seem obscured. The folks that have been here a while - researches, and particularly the camp staff - all have a sort of reverse raccoon complextion. Their faces, exposed to the blowing cold wind, low humidity, and intense sunlight have been tanned (ie, like leather) to a deep brown. All of their face, that is, except where their shades rest. It's rather amusing to see people with a pronounced sunglass tan. After a quick breakfast at 7:45, it was off to the office, as it were. Imagine trying to do delicate proking around in a rat's nest of wires, or typing out trickly lines of code, when the ambient temperature is hovering around freezing! I'll not bore you with a lot of details about the work that we did today, other than to say that at the start of the day and the end of the day, the robot was driving around nicely under radio control. When this is going on, my left arm develops a horrible crick in the elbow and wrist from cradling a laptop, packet modem, and handheld radio while typing away with my right hand. My right hand, because it has to be able to hit keys accurately, needs to be stripped down to just a glove-liner. All in all, it is a lot trickier to do this work around here than in hanover in july. Of course, this was to be expected. We had very interesting snow conditions for our driving around today. Where the bulldozer or other big vehicle had passed, we had nice hardpack, punctuated with small ridges and obstacles from where a plow may have passed. On top of this crust lies several inches of powdery snow, which is somewhat atypical of Antarctic conditions and presents and interesting traction and mobility problem for the robot. But, from what we saw today, it appears to be up to the task. Since it is only our second day here, and these things take time, we only had the chassis running around on battery power - no solar just yet. We may get to the point of mounting the solar panel box on the robot tomorrow - but probably only so that we can get the weight of the robot right for taking some data. Actually powering the robot from the panels will take a little longer. There were supposed to be a flight today to take folks and gear back to Kangerlussuaq - it is approaching the end of the season. However, the fog ruled that out. As the LC-130 made several passes over the runway, one could hear that is was only a few hundred feet off, but could not even see it. Imagine not being able to spot something as large as an LC-130! So, they will have to double- or triple-up on the flights tomorrow. The hours have passed surprisingly quickly here today, especially this afternoon as I tried to debug and diagnose our latest problem. Mealtimes are without question the best times. Although there are usually 40-50 people crammed into the big house at once during lunch and dinner, it is still possible to have a nice conversation with just the handful of people at your table. It almost surprises me how interested most folks are in the robot. Tomorrow, we will focus on assembling the solar panel box, starting to get some quantitative mobility data, and whatever might cross our paths. --Alex Streeter

The rat's nest continues to grow. There are still bits missing - such as all of the cables that bring in the solar power. In truth, it will be quite a task to get all of these wires to the outside, and up through the mast.
\|<< \|< July 27, 2005 >\| >>\|

[Main] | [Mission] | [Design] | [Science] | [Papers] | [Pictures] | [Team]