Light on the posts this week, we were up with Jasmine’s research group in Lake Tahoe camping out and helping out testing robots. So in contrast to the the blog name, this is going to be a robot related post. Since it is summer break, all of the undergrads were out on break and the lab needed some help on a deployment doing miniony things like assembling the robots and herding the submersible robots out on the water. Just as an FYI, soldering on a small boat is a surprisingly difficult thing to do.
So as the work entailed hanging out on a boat and paddling about Lake Tahoe, it was very strenuous indeed. We also were able to take an afternoon off and went for a hike up to a lily pond at Sugar Pine Point State Park. It was very pretty for the whole hike and not much of a serious climb but a pleasant hike. Overall, quite a lot of fun, some research accomplished, and another body of water added to the kayaks’ resume.

This is Jasmine doing a little robot wrangling. They took some serious pushing to get moving in the water.

We improvised and started using the kayak tops to move the robots about in the water. It was much easier this way.