Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Last week we showed you the upgrades we made to our autonomous submarine. This week, we'll show you the actual mission we're going to be attempting with the submarine: We want to take a picture of a crashed WWII B-17 bomber. The wreck sits at the bottom of the Adriatic sea at around 70 meters: Because of the depth the plane is at, diving there is very hard and requires advanced scuba diving certifications. The mission we are attempting is also very...
20 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! We are preparing our autonomous submarine for a very exciting mission in the Adriatic Sea, and in this e-mail we'll show you all of the upgrades we have made to the submarine to prepare it for the mission. 1_ Double thruster upgrade As you might have read in one of our previous newsletters, we had some problems with the submarine turning to the side while flying at high speed. This happened because of a phenomenon called "torque roll". The one...
27 days ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Since we are planning a new very exciting mission with our autonomous submarine (more info soon), we want to make it as reliable as we possibly can. One of the things we thought would be very useful is to upgrade our propellers. In the original design of the CPS A we have been using resin propellers, which came out to be quite brittle. They are much better than FDM printed propellers in terms of surface finish, but unfortunately they are not as...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Everyone! Once again, welcome to the Build Log! This is a continuation of the previous story (link to previous newsletter releases), where we showcase all of the ROVs we created before designing the CPS 5 (the drone that actually works well). After you see all of the prototypes we made that failed, you'll know what to avoid in your own ROV journey. Fourth prototype After we tested the third prototype of our ROV (mentioned in the previous newsletter), which was very much a proof of concept,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hi, Welcome to the Build Log! This week, we thought we could show you the first ever underwater drones we've built. You might have heard us mention multiple times that we've been working on underwater drones for the past 7 years (it's true). We started this journey with very little knowledge about building anything really. Today we'll show you our first ROV prototypes, tell you exactly what we've learned from building each one and how we improved later on (so you don't have to make the same...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Exciting news! We started planning to rebuild our underwater scooter that we've built at the beginning of the year. Even though in the last video about this vehicle we've said that it's completed for now (because we're too scared to use it at full power), we're thinking that we can improve it to go even faster. See our YouTube video to find out what this project is about: This time, we'll hopefully won't settle for anything less than 7m/s...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Today, I want to tell you about an unexpected problem we have encountered when testing our DIY autonomous submarine (CPS A). As you might have read, the mission has been quite successful. This is the autonomous submarine in question: Problem: During the mission, we were swimming both in: "Surface mode" - with the submarine swimming very close to the surface with the GPS antenna sticking out, and "Underwater mode" - with the submarine underwater,...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Today, I am continuing the last weeks newsletter on testing our autonomous submarine. This is the first time we have tested the submarine underwater fully autonomously. As you might know from our last week's newsletter, this comes with a lot of challenges. Once the submarine submerges, it should dead-reckon its position based on data from DVL and compass. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be that simple - for the first couple of runs, the...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Welcome back to The Build Log! Today, we can finally share our process of testing our autonomous submarine last week! As you might know, we're finally developing our autonomous submarine to be able to navigate underwater by itself. This is very difficult for a couple of reasons. The main reasons are: There is no GPS underwater - we need to rely on an advanced DVL (doppler velocity log) sensor for navigation & compass. There is no way to communicate with our submarine while...
3 months ago • 2 min read