Ping Picked Up Ping And Red Light Hit

Note: Transfered from the news archive, originally posted Feb. 26th 2008

Steady progress in sonar and vision continued today. Our hydrophones picked up signals from our pinger, which is so loud that we can hear it anywhere on deck even though it is submerged several feet below the water's surface. We need to tone it down to match the intensity level from the competition's spec.

Our new hydrophones pick up clear signals in competition's 22 kHz-30 kHz pinger frequency range, though today we generated and detected ultrasound pulses up to 240 kHz and beyond. We also observed surface echoes, wall echoes, and acoustic interference patterns (probably from the Lloyd's mirror effect).


Our AUV, Tortuga I, has fully completed the red light task from last year's competition. Only a quarter of the teams completed this objective in 2007 and just 3 teams in 2006.

Above is a video from the vehicle's forward camera, played back at several times the original speed. The vehicle starts out by searching for the red light, finds it, makes contact, then surfaces to end the mission. The small blue square marks where the vehicle "thinks" the red light is.