Blue Lobster

What is Mate? 🛳️

The Blue Lobster, successor to the infamous Red Lobster, is the SAS MATE team for the 2024 MATE ROV competition. In short, it entails building an underwater ROV, and remotely operating said ROV to complete a series of tasks. These tasks require the ROV to be maneuverable, reliable, and able to perform a variety of functions including but not limited to

• picking up and dropping objects
• interacting with objects underwater
• analysing collected data
• reading sensor data
• using data for decision-making and feedback control
• stream a live video feed to the operator
• use said video feed to both navigate and complete tasks
• use photogrammetry to recreate underwater environments
• and more!

For a more detailed view of required tasks, read this document.

Design Philosophy ✨

Rapid prototyping enables a team to develop a product iteratively. It empowers members to take the initiative, but designing an ROV for rapid prototyping requires essential decisions on both team organization and ROV design to implement this approach effectively. During rapid prototyping, issues arise due to unexpected interactions between prototypes and existing work and misunderstandings between teams. We addressed this issue by modularizing the ROV into systems and delegating them to individual subteams. Furthermore, we modularized individual core systems, allowing for rapid replacement of standalone electromechanical and software components. To facilitate system integration, we organized our team around weekly meetings that encouraged mutual understanding of how other systems worked. This approach allowed us to test several experimental solutions before integration, resulting in an innovative and reliable ROV.

Setup

Raspberry PI

• Should have pigpiod and gstreamer installed
• Should have a static IP address (192.168.1.2 used normally)
• Should have a camera connected (for camera stream)
• Should have a BNO055 IMU connected (for rotational controller)
• Should have a MS5837-30BA connected (for depth controller)

Setup

1. Edit /system/systemd/system/pigpiod.service to remove the -l option from the pigpiod startup to allow for the client computer to connect to it.
2. Then Run the sudo systemctl enable pigpiod --now to enable it on boot.
3. Add a file called run at /opt/pigpio/cgi with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
"$@"

4. Make it executable with sudo chmod +x /opt/pigpio/cgi/run
5. Install gstreamer with sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

Client (OSX)

• Should be connected to the Raspberry PI on the same network

Setup

1. Install gstreamer with brew install gstreamer
2. Install cmake and ninja with brew install cmake ninja
3. Clone this repository with git clone https://github.com/one-degree-north/mate-2024-blue-lobster -b sids-cpp-port
4. Run cmake -G Ninja -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .
5. Run ninja -C build
6. Run ./build/client to start the client

"# multiStreaming"