Sponsorship Announcements! (and the Journal Paper for the 2010 AUVSI competition)

We at the Robotics @ Maryland team are happy to announce several new sponsors! Some of these sponsors we have been working with for almost the whole year and others are brand new to the R@M team, but they've all been a huge help in getting the robot prepared for this year's competition:

Teledyne Instruments:
http://www.rdinstruments.com/App_Themes/Teledyne/images/logos/trdi_logo.gif
 Teledyne has given us their fantastic Explorer DVL module at a considerable discount, as well as a lot of support in getting up and running with it.

Sidus Solutions:
http://www.sidus-solutions.com/images/logo.gif
 Sidus Solutions has been a big help in our camera upgrades this year. They have provided OEM pricing for many of the components, as well as donated the custom housings we will be using on the robot.

TC Applied Technologies:
https://dev.tctechnologies.tc/tcat/tags/release/public/3.3.1/2228/docs/pal/html/images/TCAT.gif
 TC Applied Technologies provided us with the use of their excellent EqcoLogic EQCO400T modules which allow us to pass full speed firewire 400 signals carrying our camera images through the Subconn bulkhead connectors we use.

USBFireWire.com:
The usb-firewire logo for our sponsor USBFirewire.com
 USBFireWire.com provided us with a number of custom firewire cables in an extra hurry at cost. This was great in getting through some of the final sprint of integrating the cameras.

Thanks to all of our sponsors!

As for other news, and as the competition grows closer, we have produced the technical paper which describes the functions and some of the more technical details of the operation of the Tortuga III underwater robot. If you'd like to gain a greater understanding of the design decisions and the summarized functions of different components of the robot, the 10 page document does a great job of introducing it.

You can download a copy of our journal paper here