Underwater ROV Project

The purpose of this project to create an underwater, remotely operated vehicle capable of completing the challenges of the MarineTech ROV Competition via manual control (we will be in the Explorer class). We also intend to add some autonomous capability, since we expect that next year's competition will require autonomous operation.

The functionality of the Underwater ROV is described in three main sections:

• Mechanical Design

• Electrical

• Software

The underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) project has a number of goals. We would eventually like to make the ROV autonomous for underwater mapping and search and rescue, but it must first work well under human control. Therefore, we plan to enter it in the non-autonomous International MarineTech Competition this summer to keep us motivated and serve as a good midpoint that we can gauge our progress by. Consequently, we need to design a platform that will not only fulfill the requirements of the MarineTech competition, but can also be adapted into an autonomous vehicle. Most components should be modular so that they are easy to upgrade and replace. However, Tim does not intend to make the ROV as complex as SpyBot in terms of autonomy.

See the Jobs page.

Tim will start putting what we did in previous meetings on the Meeting Minutes page.

Here is the tech. report that Tim's team did last year.

We have decided NOT compete and work on making it better for next year.

The ROV project has received the following generous contributions. Thank you for your support!

Sponsor	Contribution
Effects in Motion	Donated custom electronics enclosure (4/15/2006)
Wright Hobbies	$100 (5/1/2006)
igus®, Inc.	Chainflex® flexible tether cable (2/23/2006)
RoboHobbies	Discount on Thrusters (2/7/2006)
RoboteQ	Discount on Motor Controllers for Thrusters (1/15/2006)
Parallax, Inc.	Servo Motor Controller (12/6/2005)
Mechanical Engineering Department	$2000 for parts (11/2005)

Left to right: Drew Gray, Tim Ward, Adam Wartman, Tyson Messori, William Hsu