Today we finished mounting all the sensors and fully assembled the boat the first time.    This is one of the first pictures we took of the whole system together.   You can see the stereoscopic vision system, the IMU, the GPS , and the LIDAR with 3D mount.  We will be posting some information on our sensing techniques and software in the coming weeks.

-Chris

Yesterday we discovered one of our thruster was not working  Fortunately it was only the wire entering the thruster and not the motor.  This meant we  were able to fix it very easily and reattach the the thruster   Click over to the Gallery to see some pictures of the repair process.

-Chris

After a couple of long weeks we have finally completed the new hull!  With the improved construction process the turn around time was much quicker than the previous attempt.   To the left you can see the finished product with half of the decking removed.  The motor configuration will be the same as last year, with three in the back and one centered in front of those three. 

To the right you can see the hull in the middle of the construction process.  After the sections were cut on the water jet, they were sanded down and fiberglassed with 3 layers of 3 ounce fiberglass.  This shows how we removed the pink foam from inside the hull.  It was a mix of dissolving it with acetone and applying heat to melt the rest.

With the hull finished and the motors mounted we are ready to being testing as soon as the sensors are mounted!

-Chris