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Protei "Alien" 5.1 by Rotterdam bridge

A week ago, we floated Protei 5.1 in Rotterdam by the famous bridge !!!

We gave a nickname to this yet undocumented version : Protei 5.1 "Alien" after we took this picture :

Protei 5.1 is mostly transparent body, so we can things move inside.

Protei 5.1 is the baby of Piem Wirtz, Etienne Gernez, Henrik Rudstrom and Cesar Harada, all built for about $150 at the V2_ in Rotterdam, NL.

Protei 5.1 wasn't a truly functionnal prototype, but enabled us to :

- Combine Inflatable AND articulated hull (Protei 002 + 003).

- Test new Materials.

- Enhance a more compact version of the command box with suspended servos.

- Enhance the transmission cable path.

- Give a preview to the $400 backer of the type of Protei they will get.

It was great fun, we learnt a lot again but overall Protei 5.1 will be very useful for the whole Protei team coming this summer in Rotterdam to build the full-scale Prototype.

If you want to stay updated with the progress of Protei, we recommend you to join the Open_Sailing Facebook group:)

Just as a reminder : there is only 5 days left to back Protei on Kickstarter. Thanks!

Original Post on Kickstarter, copy on Protei/news.

Filed under // sailing Alien Collaboration Model NL Open_Sailing Protei Protei5.1 Robot Test V2_

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Launch of Protei, oil spill cleaning open hardware sailing robot.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarminoru/protei-open-hardware-oil-spill-cleaning-sailing-ro

Dear fellows. We just launch yesterday Protei on Kickstarter.

Please share the link to our Kickstarter on your facebook, or if you know people in
- environmental justice

- sailing world

- DIY

- open-source

- engineering

Protei is a fleet of Sailing Drones, developed primarily to collect Oil Spills under Open Hardware licensing. An oil spill drifts down the wind, Protei sails upwind to collect the oil. Everyone is welcome to join, contribute, modify, produce, distribute the design and share their findings.

You can watch the 3 minutes video under to understand the detail of how it works :

The technology is really exciting beyond the fact that it could help for ocean study and cleaning.
Have a lovely TED2011!

Filed under // Kickstarter Oil Spill Open_Sailing Perry Chen Protei Robot TED TED2011 TEDxOilSpill

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Protei.org - Ocean cleaning robots presented at TEDxMidAtlantic

youtube.com/watch?v=OYWmBgHvlJU
HD archive | Mp4 Archive | Flv mini archive

Thanks to the TEDxMidAtlantic organizers Dave Troy and Nate Mook for this great event.
You can see a shorter and clearer video of the Protei.org presentation without speech hesitations and working animations just below :

youtube.com/watch?v=uv5D6E5Nv_M
Download HD archive (84mb) | Original huge HD (1.2GB)

Filed under // Sea Ocean Presentation Protei Robot TED TEDxMidAtlantic Washington DC

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Protei-005

Also on youtube
http://protei.org

Protei-005's aim is to have the control on-board, no more remote controlling like 002, 003, the machine should sense its environment and make the decision where to go next.

The test did not go so well, but we've learnt a lot on the way :
- the basic electronics (diagrams and pictures coming up soon on the http://protei.org) is pretty good, worked out of the water and provides a good extendable basis for future developments.
- improved miniaturization
- simpler shape are easier to compute and evaluate (drag + turbulences) so that's also quite a good thing for simple dynamic engineering
BUT
the many cool things about Protei-005 is that we start to sketch a model for evaluation :) So, we have
- wind sensor (direction + power) made from a Wiimote Nunchuck
- accelerometers on board, vibration sensors
- Xbee to send the information in real-time to a logging computer

We have a controlled environment so we can simulate wind, at the speed we like to. Hopefully next version we can do also waves and currents... :)
And even better, we have a webcam above the whole setting capturing the boat movement. So we have with Protei-005, not only a semi-autonomous machine but also a good indoor evaluation setup. Eventhough the test wasn't impressive (not bad for 3 days of work on a robot though), we have a lot of new infos. So in the close future, it is not only about the machine but it is about :

* Machine (with sensors onboard + realtime communication)

* Controlled environment

* Software analyzing behavior :)

And we need to urgently work on the documentation on the website and publishing the specs (sorry!), and eventually a step by step for each protei up-to-date... Also the fact that Protei is a collaboration of Open_Sailing & randomwalks, needs to be way clearer, so much work to do... :)

Some pictures

mechanics

The fabulous Kisoon !

That's how simple this machine is.

Electronics tinkering :

Diagram

The real thing

tinkering

wireless communication of sensor data to computer :)

Webcam tracking + real time path algorithm by Sey Min

Path analyzed with Proce55ing

Next larger scale evaluation (outdoor with huuuuuge Protei)

We also have a korean presentation here

You can see the presentation online, or download as pdf (14mb)

Filed under // Electronics Korea NABI Open_Sailing Protei Robot Sensor Seoul randomwalks

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Protei-003

also on youtube
20100817 in Lake Pontchartrain

http://protei.org
by Open_Sailing + randomwalks
Cesar Harada + Sey Min

thanks to
LA Bucket Brigade : http://labucketbrigade.org/
Suzette Toledano Becker : http://suzettebecker.com/
with the support of V2_ : http://v2.nl/
Special thanks to Hunter Daniel, Mariko Toyoji, Shannon Dosemagen.

Test of Protei-003 (3m long, 6.5 meter high, 25kg total, 18kg ballast) didnt go that well ... hum hum... The mast feet broke, not enough triangulation I guess... the ballast didn't affect the direction enough (too flexible keel) ... and there was no wind (HAHAHA) just enough of a beautiful sun to make really romantic pictures, the best one below by Hunter Daniel. BUT we learnt a lot and Protei-004 will be Übercool! Can't be bingo every time, right :) For those who don't know about Protei : it is a fleet of semi-autonomous sailboat that are specifically designed to pull long heavy loads, long oil-absorbant booms to collect oil spill. http://protei.org You can also check out the previous test machines that led us to this design : Protei-002 (entirely articulated RC boat), Protei-001 (front-steering boat).

And now time travel : from the navigation back into the making :

Filed under // Sea Articulated Incheon LABB NOLA New Orleans Oil Spill Open_Sailing Protei Robot Sey Min Water randomwalks

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Protei-002

By Open_Sailing + randomwalks
Cesar Harada + Sey Min
Thanks to  LA Bucket Brigade : http://labucketbrigade.org/
Suzette Toledano Becker : http://suzettebecker.com/
with the support of V2_ : http://v2.nl/
Based on the T37 of Tippecanoe Boats : http://modelsailboat.com

Protei is an unmanned articulated sailboat designed to pull heavy loads upwind, in particular oil absorbent boom as a "long tail", to clean up oil spill in remote areas or in bad weather. Protei is needed to replace human labor exposed to toxic pollutant and in hurricane time.

Protei-002 is an articulated robot, the test went OK. I had to trim the sail smaller, add weight at the ballast, make the electronic access higher to allow more lateral tilt. The fact that the electronic is not well protected is a big problem : as soon as there is too much wind, the boat tilts a lot and fills with water, so I was not able to conduct extensive testing, quickly I had shortcuts on the machine. For those who didn't see, Protei-001 was a super cool front-steering robotic sail-boat. Time is running out, instead of working more on Protei-002, I'm building Protei-003, inflatable, bigger, stronger, faster, more powerful, coming soon !

http://protei.org

Filed under // Electronics Gulf NOLA Oil Spill Pontchartrain Protei RC Robot

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Protei-001

Yesterday went testing Protei-001 on Lake Pontchartrain (New Orleans LA).
What's so special for Protei-001? It is a Front-Steering Remote Control Sailing Boat (the rudder is right a the front of the boat).
First tested without a tail, and with the tail (about 4 meters). Without the tail, the maneuverability is amazing ; with the tail, the control is pretty good, much better than with a classical back rudder sailing boat. The aim is to make a powerfull yet simple semi-autonomous sailing boat with a high pulling capacity - in the case of Protei it is a long oil-absorbing tail that cleans an oil spill.

Also on youtube

http://protei.org
by Open_Sailing + Random Walks
Cesar Harada + Sey Min

Thanks to :
LA Bucket Brigade : labucketbrigade.org/
Suzette Toledano Becker : suzettebecker.com/
V2_ : v2.nl/

Based on the T37 : modelsailboat.com/

Protei-001 is on the second line of this diagram, Protei-002 (third line) is an all articulated boat, to be tested very soon!

More pictures :)

This is the technical drawing of Protei-002, with the exact same proportions of Protei-001, but not only front-steering : the whole boat can curve :

testing Protei-002 very very soon! Stay tuned ~

Filed under // Front-Steering Incheon Korea LA Bucket Brigade LABB NOLA Navigation New Orleans Oil Oil Spill Open_Sailing Protei Robot Rudder Suzette USA randomwalks toledano

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Bay Jimmy, post-oil spill observation

Second post but first large map using the techniques of Grassrootsmapping.org for LA Bucket Brigade – thanks guys for putting this wonderful DIY technology together. So! In the late morning 22nd of July 2010, Hunter Daniel and myself went to map out of Port Sulphur, on these funky boats :

With 2 boats we took this route (see google map) :

I traced this route with my mobile phone Google Nexus One and the fantabulous Open GPS tracker for Android – 4 stars rating!
This is what we could see from the boat, kinda boring :

Soon after I launched a balloon and Hunter a kite out there, kinda exciting :

we captured nice pictures, here 6 details :

These 6 pictures were made using 270 stills… that was a 12 hours work on photoshop sincehugin (an open-source photo mosaic software) didnt do the trick – yet :/ Still working on it to automate the process and spend more time sipping mango juice
In addition to what we had a bad GPS trace – my bad, I mean, it is good but I did’nt know where we started taking pictures on that route… Also the GPS time-stamp and the camera time-stamp did not match… So, here is the trick I found:

1. stitch approximately consecutive images with multiple layers on photoshop, when your shape takes shape you may guess where you are on the map. If you only have pictures of water, you can make a great water map … USELESS! BOOO! When your balloon/kite is up there, make sure it is flying over what you want to see, for us, the coast line – land and water. Wind is crucial, and because of the sun you want to avoid taking pictures when the sun is too high (reflection of the sky in the water).

2. produce a very high resolution map of the area. I didn’t want to do it all manually and I wanted to figure out a hack that would work on every platform (OSX, Windows, Linux), so here we go :
- find your point of interest on any map system, write down the coordinates of the top left hand corner of the tile you want to produce.
- go to http://pallit.lhi.is/bigice/bigpic.html , from here enter your Lat and Long (me : 29.468400, -89.911300), the zoom, number of tiles etc… hit “submit”. It will produce a huge map with a static URL. In my case the URL that produced the map (everything is in the URL PHP request) you see here :
http://pallit.lhi.is/bigice/supergooger.php?lat=29.468400&lon=-89.911300&zoom=18&x_tiles=40&y_tiles=40

– now you have this huge picture, you need to capture it from your browser, download theScreenGrab! add-on for firefox only – but working on all platforms (download Firefox NOW if you don’t have it, you…!). Now, grab that huge picture with the tiny ScreenGrab! button at the bottom right corner of your browser, save as png or jpg.

3. Now, it is much easier to map with a support map! just keep adding layers on photoshop of all the pictures you took, adjusting, stretching, so it matches roughly google maps – you will often find that land shape changes, trees, rivers, buildings etc… that’s very exciting, this is why we are mapping : everything changes !

Ok, so now we have this huge empty map :

That’s another 6 hours work adjusting 700 pics layer by layer on photoshop ; hey, 270 images in 12 hours VS 700 images in 6 hours => see, it is much faster with a support map! We got that :

Don’t forget to put a scale and cardinal orientation + legal mentions.
So, under your eyes that’s a 17000 x 17000 pixel map, made of 970 pictures taken at 1000ft altitude, depicting about 5 linear km of damaged coastline. Combining the 6 details views and the general map we could observe that the south side was much more exposed to the spill (more dark brown brrrrr). Using this map we could also establish that on the exposed side, even the inland waterways are strongly affected by the spill : we can use these maps to quantify the surface affected by the oil spill, and the mass of crude attached to the surface coastline. Now even cooler, you can see these maps on google earth, download the KMZ file here (dont worry it is a tiny file – all the content is online). FLY !

Apart from mapping this catastrophe – which is very useful for scientific study and for lawsuits against BP- why am I personally learning aerial photography? Well, because I am currently designing an oil collecting robot called “protei“.

Protei is a sailing semi-autonomous robot with a long oil absorbing tail. Surface oil drifts downwind, so Protei sails upwind, taking and taking, intercepting oil sheens. Imagine many many of these cheap machines out there in the ocean collecting oil

After some research …

I built a steampunk test machine that is pretty promising with a flexible hull front-steering :

We are also testing at sea the behavior of a long tail, and same, going pretty well …

See these little balloons on the surface of the water? And this is when aerial photography comes handy : to evaluate the efficiency and behavior of Protei, seeing everything from above helps a lot, I can see the trajectory, the movement of the tail, the interaction with oil. Also having a highly visible “flying flag” in the sky is amazing to optimize safety and long range communication (flying antenna)… Exciting no? And the challenge is here, millions of liters of crude oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Niger Delta, in Latin America, the middle east, in Asia… Protei_Oil_Spill has a busy future!

Of course, just like grassroots mapping, Protei is developed open-source and collaboratively, so I hope that sometimes soon, Protei will come back to land with a lot of amazing pictures for LA Bucket Brigade and its amazing oil spill map, GrassrootMapping,Cartagen and Open_Sailing! I received most electronic parts for the next prototype of Protei_Oil_Spill this morning (YAY!), I am building in New Orleans, so if you are around, or if you want to help the project remotely, do get in touch – cesar@protei.org – thanks!

Filed under // Balloon Barataria Bay Boat DIY Grassrootsmapping Hacking Jimmy LA Bucket Brigade LABB Louisiana Mapping NOLA New Orleans Observation Oil Oil Spill Open_Sailing Protei Robot Science Sky TEDxOilSpill

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TEDxNASA - Dennis Hong - superb robots, superb method

Via Ollie Palmer.

The simply excellent method of Dennis Hong:
1. Sparkle idea -> database
2. Brainstorm (no criticism, refinement)
3. Education
4. Work smart, work hard, have fun!

Filed under // Biomimicry Distributed System Mechanics Mechatronics NASA Robot TED TEDxNASA Talk Video

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Protei "Alien" 5.1 by Rotterdam bridge

Launch of Protei, oil spill cleaning open hardware sailing robot.

Protei.org - Ocean cleaning robots presented at TEDxMidAtlantic

Protei-005

Protei-003

Protei-002

Protei-001

Bay Jimmy, post-oil spill observation

TEDxNASA - Dennis Hong - superb robots, superb method