On Wednesday, July 30, the team went to TRANSDEC for the first day of practice at the competition pool. By having Triton pass through the validation gate during the first practice run, CUAUV became the first team to pre-qualify for the 2008 AUVSI competition. A total of eleven teams pre-qualified today; the others will have a chance to do so tomorrow. Testing for the rest of the day has been successful, with Triton consistently executing mission elements and capturing many underwater images.

After much hard work, CUAUV assembled Triton. The team then held their first San Diego pool test in the hotel pool. A few mission elements were successfully tested and minor errors that were encountered have been resolved. For more pictures from Tuesday, please visit the 2008 Competition Image Gallery.

After an adventurous first day, the team finally arrived in San Diego. Starting with a 4:15 am meeting time, CUAUV loaded up the cars and drove to the Syracuse Airport. Flight delays, followed by cancellations, resulted in the team driving back to Ithaca and taking an afternoon flight. Upon arriving at San Diego at 8:30 pm PST, CUAUV encountered problems with hotel rooms and rental cars. However, everything was eventually sorted out and the team enjoyed a much needed night of rest. CUAUV is excited to assemble Triton today and hopes to have everything ready for pool testing tonight.

This is Tracy Cheung reporting from San Diego, and I'll be adding more updates and photos in the coming days of the competition. Thanks for your interest in our team!

Above, Triton silently awaits the FedEx truck as CUAUV prepares to leave for San Diego at 4:30am today. The team is greatly looking forward to a noon arrival in San Diego. Stay tuned for updates from the competition.

On Friday night, CUAUV held its last pool test in Teagle Hall before heading off to the AUVSI competition. The team successfully tested mission elements and is confident about Triton's abilities. The competition runs from July 29 - August 3. Please check the website for continuing updates on the team's performance at the competition.

Today, CUAUV participated in the Cornell Exploration Series portion of the Upward Bound program. The goal of the program is to provide academic instruction and college preparation to high school students from the Elmira and Groton areas. The team presented Triton to the eleven students, and showed card suit and face recognition demos (above right). The event culminated in a balloon-powered boat building activity (above left).

Pictured above, team members Brad Factor and Brian Mittereder show off the latest addition to Triton, the vehicle's kill and mission start switches. The kill switch enables and disables Triton's thrusters. Likewise, the mission start switch toggles mission running on and off. Both switches display their status visually with LED's and are magnetically actuated and epoxy cast to avoid corrosion issues. They will be tested at tomorrow's pool test.

Last week, CUAUV attempted its first pool test with the team-built ventilation duct. Pictured above are team members Conrad Petersen, Sam Fladung, and Erin Fischell loading the duct into the pool. Visit the image galleries for more pictures from this pool test.

CUAUV has released more underwater videos from pool tests in Teagle Pool. They are available on our underwater video page here.

In the future, more videos will be uploaded directly to this page.

A new video from the downward camera on Triton while it runs a completely autonomous practice mission in the Teagle Pool has been released.

The mission being run starts with a zigzag search until the pipe is found. Once found, the vehicle centers itself over the pipe. Once the pipe is centered in frame, the vehicle grabs the heading and follows it. After the second pipe, the vehicle takes off for the safe (which you can't see in the downward camera).

The video can be seen on youtube and is embedded below. For a higher-resolution version (4.5 MB), click here.