As some of you know, I’m spending the next three weeks on the research ship Discovery, cruising from Glasgow to Tenerife. I don’t know how much of an adventure it’ll be, but I thought I’d blog about it anyway, partly for myself, but also in case anyone else’s interested in what I’m up to.
I boarded the ship last night, and we got a brief introduction to the ship. It’s bigger than I expected – there are 49 people on board and it doesn’t feel crowded. I get an individual cabin, with room for a desk and a couple of chairs as well as a bed. It all seems very civilised.
I’m here to work on our automatic fault detection for the Autosub autonomous underwater vehicle. We’ll be putting Autosub in the water a few times during the trip, but our software will still be running off-board. We’ll download all the logged telemetry from Autosub when it returns to the surface and doing some testing on that. I’m looking forward to seeing how the team actually use Autosub in practice, and how they write the scripts that control it on each mission. One of the things we want to try out is some software we’ve built to check the scripts before they go on the vehicle.
We started this morning with a meeting with the Captain so we could discuss the plans for the cruise. After that we visited the bridge – there are a lot of ships out in the Irish Sea! We’ve also had an emergency drill, although we stopped short of actually getting into the lifeboats. It’s all quite a change from my usual days in the office.
A big challenge is going to be keeping fit. I have the OMM the weekend after I get back, and after our good result at the Saunders, Alex will be expecting me to be ready to run fast, so I’ll have to find a way to train on-board. There’s a gym, but I haven’t had a chance to try it yet. The ship’s too small (and too covered in cranes and winches) to run around!
We’re putting Autosub in the water first thing tomorrow morning so everyone is sorting out the scripts for the mission this evening. There’s lots to do to get the sub ready!
To run the software off-board, do you actually need to throw the laptop into the sea?
Sounds like a fantastic work trip!!
But how will you keep fit enough in a gym??
And don’t forget to get any cake piccys from the galley :yum: :yum:
That sounds like a Fatness regime to me…
I hear that swimming is very good for fitness. Does the ship have a pool or something similar available ❓
Yeah, I was thinking that swimming might be a good fitness strategy. What about jumping in the water and swimming alongside?
You could even take you autosub with you – it would be an extra test, and provide something hold on to if you get tired. 😕
Awesome report! 😎