Field work was one of the aspects to my grad program that I was the most excited about, and here we are! I’d participated remotely on a cruise my work was being tested on last year, but it’s not quite the same as being there in person.
This trip was mostly centered around glider field ops - collecting data and testing some recent upgrades on our lab’s robotic glider. For my research, I’m hoping to find ways to use sonar to improve underwater manipulation, but I haven’t done much with sonar data yet was excited to collect some during this trip with the glider.
Unfortunately, the shipment containing the glider’s batteries got delayed on the way out of Woods Hole, and ultimately didn’t arrive until a week into our 10-day trip, which only left three days for testing and data collection. On the downside, that meant we didn’t get to test everything we’d originally hope to, but on the upside that meant there was some time to just enjoy Puerto Rico (the break from Boston weather was also appreicated). We went kayaking and snorkeling, and got in some pickleball in the evenings (made good use of those highschool tennis skills!)
Since there were still things we couldn’t fit into the three days of testing and were hesitant to deal with shipping delays again, we decided to leave the equipment there - we’ll be back in January!