The close

It was our last full day in Malta and most of us started it by sleeping in. Amy left early in the morning to attend her last Maltese water polo practice. Once everyone was up we disassembled Vernon so he could be packed away. Then we went on a small excursion to Marsaxlokk to visit the Għar Dalam Caves. We finished the day by having dinner at Surfside with Timmy and his wife, Belle.

Amy: 
W.O.W. I cannot believe tonight is our last night in Malta. I had such an amazing time here with both ICEX and water polo. It was so great to actually be able to do field work in a career that I thought would only fill my future with cubicles. I loved the deployments and being on the boat with my team and Jason, especially when Vernon brought back good data. Timmy is so funny and nice, and it was great working with. I am so grateful that he was able to introduce me to the Sliema Women's Water Polo team. I also got to practice with Malta's National Women's team, but I especially bonded with the ladies of Sliema. I'm so happy that I had the opportunity to make so many great friends through water polo, and I feel like it completely shaped my experience here in Malta. I was not here just to work (although don't worry, there was plenty of that!), I got to play the sport I love with people that I will never forget. I only hope that someday I will get to see them and their beautiful island again.

Getting a Sliema Women's swim cap as a gift from my amazing coach Mario and lovely team.

Wentao:
ICEX is such a unique research experience. Before coming to Malta, I could not imagine I would be doing robotics research on a boat. I still remember one of our presenter asked us whether we were studying underwater archaeology, and the surprise on his face when he learned that we were studying computer science. During this month, we faced many challenges, from not getting good sonar data to AUV refusing to dive. I learned a lot from the process of tackling these challenges. Besides robotics research, we also had an amazing cultural experience. Malta was a complete mystery to me a month before, but after the fascinating presentations by our speakers and weekend trips to prehistoric temples and grand cathedrals, I became deeply interested in the history of this small Mediterranean island. I am very thankful to this opportunity and will definitely recommend it to students who are interested in an immersive research and cultural experience.

Roslyn:
Malta has been a great learning and bonding experience. I was excited to do something with computer graphics, but be working with people from different fields, like math, robotics, and archeology. I think this project reaffirmed my choice of software engineering as my major and my passion for computer graphics. The month has been so busy and full of excitement. The discovery of new wrecks were probably some of my favorite moments, and getting to watch the divers go down and explore them. Socially, ICEX was also an amazing experience. I am so grateful for the team I had, and I think I made some lifelong friends. We meshed so well, worked great together, and learned a lot from each other. I think the Harvey Mudd students may visit us at Cal Poly for our fall break, which would be a blast. One thing I wish we had been able to do more of was interact more with Maltese people and students. I very much enjoyed working with Timmy's masters and phd students, but none of them were Maltese. Their research was very interesting though, and I always love talking with people from other cultures and hearing their experiences. Overall, it's been a fantastic month. I am ready to go home for summer, but I will always look back on my time in Malta and the people I was with with fondness. I also want to give a special thanks to Zoe and Chris, for all the work they do, and giving each of us this amazing opportunity.

Jeffrey:
Before the start of the trip in Malta the team had met twice: once at Cal Poly and once at Catalina. From these two meetings I thought all the people were nice, but was not sure how the trip was going to go. However, after living with everyone in Malta for a couple of days I was very happy to be around my fellow teammates. I hope these friendships will be some of my longest lasting.

At the beginning of the trip I was also unsure how the technical side of things would go. We had yet to take good sonar data with Vernon and the classification algorithm Wentao and I had been working on was based on a small set of sonar data that was captured with different sonar arrays than were on Vernon.

When we arrived one of the first things we did was meet with Timmy where he gave use some information on using the sonar. For example he explained the difference between the high and low sonar and good range and depth combinations for acquiring data. Using this new information and a some trial deployments we were able to become proficient using the sonar in only a few days.

As for the classification algorithm, it turned out to perform very similarly to as it had on the previous data set. Despite this the algorithm still needed a lot of work to increase its precision. Wentao and I spent our coding time in the the first two weeks trying new filters to increase the precision. None of our attempts were successful. Then in the next week we spent most of our time debugging technical issues with Vernon and trying to extract accurate positions from the sonar scans.

From the technical experience, I think the most valuable lesson I learned was from spending time working on things that didn’t work or didn’t work well enough. In the future I need to accept when things do not work and move on to other solutions.

Sam:

This past month in Malta has been a blast. As a team I feel like we've bonded strongly and have worked together well. I'm looking forward to an ICEX team reunion! The beginning was a little rough with the AUV while we figured things out and got comfortable with each other but we all learned and improved quickly. Towards the end of the trip our deployments became very smooth and successful. Our work felt important and I'm glad we were able to work with Timmy and his master's students at the University of Malta. I'm also excited to continue working over the summer with Amy and Zoe to improve the reconstruction and explore some new ideas. ICEX has been a fantastic experience and I'm glad I had the chance to be a part of it.

Jane:
This past month has been an adventure I will always remember. College introduced me to robotics, but ICEX has given me the experience and confidence to pursue a field that makes me excited to work every day. I will never forget the simultaneous fear and joy of sending the AUV into the open sea for the first time, and nothing was more satisfying than coming home after a long but successful deployment. While there were ups and downs during the trip, the team always managed to tackle the many challenges that come with underwater robotics (i.e. floating plastic bags in the sea). Between fixing the compass and finding out about important safety settings, we managed to discover a new plane and boat, as well as obtain some amazing footage of the Beaufighter. Amy, Roslyn, Sam, Jeff, Wentao - Thanks for being the best team I could ask for. We managed to survive a month together without anyone falling off a cliff, and we had so much fun along the way. We had some crazy adventures around Malta, but my favorite memories will always be the times we really got to know each other better (read: card games). Chris, Zoe - Thanks for being the best mentors and for giving us this opportunity. You are my role models! Timmy - Thanks for being you and for all the Kn you've given us this past month. I'm so thankful to be a part of the ICEX team, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend this summer. Ciao for now Malta!