Day 4 - The Black Sea
Monday May 15, 2006
Today we’re off and running. We’ve started running around to each site that showed an interesting bump on the radar. Unfortunately most of the results from these in depth searches have shown interesting results: We found several piles of wire lost overboard by some ship, a shoe and a refrigerator.
Since nothing to mention has popped up in our monitors. I thought I would describe how this whole operation works, as some readers are new, some probably wouldn't mind a refresher, and finally it's still pretty cool what IFE does.There are two vehicles: Hercules and Argus. Hercules (the top picture) is the vehicle with the manipulator. It has two arms that can reach out and pick up rocks and objects off the bottom of the sea floor and either move it close to the cameras or put it in one of the many compartments it has to bring up to the surface for the scientists to view.
One of the arms is controlled by a simple computer interface, like on a video game. It has a button that says "up" and you push it, and it raises it's arm. But, of course this is terribly combersome, as each button pressed is a step in that direction. So, if the object is far away, you have to press "up", "up", "up", "up", "up" etc.
The other arm has a very nice interface. It has what is called an interactive feedback joystick. If the pilot pushes against something (rock, a piece of wood, etc) the pilot actually feels the joystick push back with the same resistance the object is putting on the manipulating arm. So, if the pilot tries to pick something up, and it's too heavy, then the joystick will try and pull the pilot's arm down. It's very cool.
Hercules has 6 cameras: One on all four sides, a bubble cam (which can pivot 360 degrees) and a High definition camera. All of these cameras are used for different purposes, mostly to give the view of what is around Hercules to the pilot. That way he knows if he's about to drive into anything.
There is a 30 meter kevlar tether that connects the back end of Hercules to the back end of the other ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) Argus (second picture). Argus is the street lamp/fly-on-the-wall vehicle. Argus hovers about 10 meters above Hercules. It has four huge bright lights underneath it, so it can flood the area with more light to allow the Hercules' pilot to see more of the area around it. It also has 4 cameras on-board: 3 little cameras are there to show the area around Argus, and one HD camera can view Hercules and show where it is and what it's doing. This is a beautiful shot.
posted by DaveandBrian @ 5:26 AM
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