Day 14

Today we did an 8 hour long endurance test with the Cool Robot towing the air sampler behind it the whole time.  It's path is to navigate from camp to the far side of the skiway and travel north to the other end and back making a 11km box, which was done twice making for about a 22km run today.  See the Summit station maps to get a better idea of what I am talking about: http://www.summitcamp.org/site/.  The first go around Jim and Ben skied with the robot (just under 4 hours) to make sure it did not hit anything and the second time around we just watched it from the big house through binoculars and a telescope.  The robot did great on the run whereas the user computer kept loosing communication and every time we restarted the program it would stop the robot.  The first time it happened we didn't realize it for about half an hour.  We eventually figured it out and were able to get the robot to go again, which was great to discover that we could communicate with the robot that far out and not have to go chase it down on a snowmobile.

Ben and Jim skiing after the Cool Robot on its first circuit.