Electronics Research¶

Communication¶

Means of Sending and Receiving Data¶

It seems as though radio waves will work well enough for our robots. Radio waves do not work well underwater, but for the ranges that we are dealing with, this might not be a problem. See the following article: (http://vger.aa.washington.edu/publications/msee_thesis_patrick_bettale_final.pdf). What is to be tested is only the ability of data to be sent underwater, and at this point, the data that is sent is not important.

Data that is transmitted¶

Once we determine what each robot needs to know, we will determine what data will be broadcast from each robot. We will also determine the protocol for the data.

Robot Tracking & Triangulation¶

Finding distance¶

So far sonar seems to be what we will be using. We need to test the ability of sonar to be sent and received underwater. It is rumored that there is a hydrophone in one of the old boxes. So far it seems to be that if a sonar ping is sent out, the distance to the original location can be found knowing the amount of time that has passed since the ping was generated. This is the first thing to be tested out.

Triangulation methods¶

There are a few triangulation methods that have been talked about. It has been observed that four points are needed in order to triangulate each robots relative location. The depth of the robots is helpful for triangulation. There have been multiple designs for the triangulation, one of which had multiple points on each robot. This allows for a minimum swarm size of 2 robots, vs. 4 robots.

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