As the title says, today was the first day of qualifier runs!

The day began at 7:20 with our first practice run. Due to the qualifiers, all practice runs during qualifier days will be done on the practice side of TRANSDEC. We attempted another full mission run this morning. We successfully completed the validation gate, buoys, and first wire. At the bins task, we dropped two markers in the same bin, quickly followed by shooting two torpedoes through the target. During the emperor, we were able to knock off one of the grapes. Finally, we attempted the hydrophones task but unfortunately ran into problems with confusing the practice side and competition side pinger. Even with the problems, it was a very high scoring run.

Around 12:30 we had our second practice run. Unfortunately, due to the lighting conditions at that time (solar noon) we had a lot of trouble identifying pipes which slowed down our run. Most of the time was spent trying to tune vision on the fly to handle the conditions. Again, we also confused competition side and practice side pingers because they were both on simultaneously. Although not a lot of tasks were accomplished during the run, we were further able to tune mission to handle all lighting conditions.

Finally, the time came for our first qualifier at 4:00pm! We began with the run by successfully completing the validation gate, buoys, and wire. After the wire while getting a heading from one of the pipes to the bins, an error in the code occurred that caused the vehicle to think that the heading to the bins was 180 degrees inverted from the true value. This caused a significant time delay but, due to the robustness of the code, the vehicle was still able to find the bins and drop one marker before timing out. Thankfully, this error turned out to be a trivial fix after analyzing the run after the fact. After the bins, we successfully shot two torpedoes through the small holes on the target. Next, we approached the emperor. Unfortunately, due to the time delay earlier, right as we were about to knock off a grape, the emperor task timed out as well and we were not able to get either of them. As we attempted the hydrophone task, we were successfully able to enter the correct octagon, but due to the practice side pinger again the vehicle exited the octagon soon after. At this point, the mission timed out and the vehicle surfaced, unfortunately outside the octagon. Even with the problems, though, the run was very high scoring and we are extremely pleased with the run and how well the vehicle responded to problem cases such as these.

Overall, we are extremely happy with how our first day of qualifiers turned out, and we were ecstatic to hear that we had scored first in static judging this year! Getting ready for another day of qualifiers tomorrow with our second qualifier run at 4:30pm!

Team member Mike Mahoney managing the tether for our first practice run of the day.



Team members Brook, Melissa, and Jisha talking to interested passer-bys about Killick.



Killick passing through the validation gate during the second practice run.



Killick approaching buoys during the second practice run.



Killick in the octagon during the second practice run.



Killick passing through the validation gate during the first qualifier.



Killick on the Jumbo-tron dropping markers in the bins during the first qualifier.