ARTEMIS

Docking Bar Tested Under Ice

Chris, Kristof, Evan, and I deploy the ARTEMIS docking rod from our fish hut. (photo: Peter Kimball)

With favorable tidal conditions occurring between 8pm and 2am last night, the programmers headed to the fish hut for a late-night test of the ARTEMIS docking bar. We tested a few vehicle software features, but the highlight of the night was the first-ever deployment of the flashing ARTEMIS docking bar beneath the ice. We wanted to know how far away a robot could be from the bar for it to still be visible, as well as how far away the computer vision dock detector algorithm could identify it. We started Sunfish looking at the bar, and backed away while monitoring the video image. The water is extremely clear in McMurdo sound at this time of year. We reached a range of about 150 m, and were still able to see the bar(!). The computer vision algorithm was able to get intermittent hits even at this range, and was reliable up close (within 20m). The computer vision system only needs to function within about 5m, and the cameras have much better low light capabilities on ARTEMIS than Sunfish, so we called it a success and moved on to other tests.

We got some trippy sci-fi-esque video of the docking bar being deployed down the borehole, as well as Sunfish being recovered through heavy platelet ice. Check it out below!

Sunfish observes the first-ever deployment of the docking bar into McMurdo Sound

Sunfish is recovered through the borehole with heavy (but beautiful) platelet ice accumulation.

Reporting by Peter Kimball and Evan Clark

Sunday Science Talk

I give a talk about ARTEMIS as part of the Sunday Science Talks series in the McMurdo Station Dining Hall. (photo: Justin Lawrence)

I gave the Sunday Science Lecture yesterday. Riding a wave of enthusiasm from Vickie’s talk last week, I talked about the ARTEMIS vehicle and how it fits into the SIMPLE astrobiology science mission. Bill provided nice solid model renderings to illustrate some of the vehicle concepts. Evan and I demoed the actual lighted docking bar during the talk. I really enjoyed giving the talk, and I was pleased by the enthusiastic audience participation when I asked questions like “who believes there is or was at some time life elsewhere in the universe?”

We will be doing another show-and-tell with ARTEMIS after dinner tonight.

Reporting by Peter Kimball

Docking Bars

Two ARTEMIS docking bars in different states of assembly. (photo: Peter Kimball)

Evan and I were in the Crary lab today assembling the LED-illuminated docking bars that ARTEMIS uses to dock with its recovery gear. The spacing and flashing frequency of the LEDs is known by the ARTEMIS software, so it can easily find the bar and compute the distance between itself and the bar. Since the bar serves a critical purpose in the docking process, we will have a spare ready to substitute if necessary.

Evan sciences the docking bars. (photo: Peter Kimball)

Reporting by Peter Kimball

Six-Person Office

It turns out that seven people fit in our Crary Lab office. (photo: Josh Moor)

We scoffed when we learned that our office in the Crary lab building was designated for six people. “Four people is about the max. Six would be crazy,” we said. Then yesterday, it came to pass that we ended up with seven people in the office discussing the merits of various data postprocessing pipeline architectures just before dinner. No problem.

Reporting by Peter Kimball

Scouting the Ice Shelf

Alasdair and Josh wait for the rest of us to return to our snowmobiles for the trip back to our field site. (photo: Peter Kimball)

Once ARTEMIS science operations begin, we will need to send personnel over the surface with tracking equipment to obtain GPS measurements of the robot’s position. Britney, Justin, Josh, and I headed out on snowmobiles with Alasdair (a USAP sea ice safety expert) to scout the area of the ice shelf where surface travel will be the most difficult. We rode approximately due West from our field site.

What we learned was encouraging. The shelf ice was very smooth for nearly 8 km. After a very sudden transition, the ice beyond that point is very rough with wind ablation features. Those features are dense enough, and high enough that snowmobile travel will be very slow, and Pisten Bully travel will be impossible beyond that transition. the encouraging bit is that the first 8 km are so smooth – smooth enough to travel in a Pisten Bully. The range of ARTEMIS is 10 km, so we’ll have fairly easy surface tracking, even to the worst-case West for most of the vehicle range.

The wind was out of the East, so when we turned around to travel back to the site, we were heading straight upwind, and our comfort level plummeted. Tuesday was very cold. Wind speeds were high and forecasted to continue increasing. We would have liked to scout along more directions from camp, but we made the call that the cold and wind made it too dangerous for us to stay out. I also would have liked to take more photos out there, but the thermal cost of going down to only two glove layers for photography was quite high, so I only took a few.

We’ll do more scouting on a warmer, calmer day, but learning what we learned Tuesday has taken some pressure off and made us feel fairly confident about our surface operations.

Reporting by Peter Kimball