ROV Mark III
Our current ROV (2019–now)
This ROV is still in development. That's why some information and media will be added to this page later on. Nevertheless, you can already get an impression of our current status.
A look inside our ROV
The core of our ROV consists of two Raspberry Pis, identical to our last ROV. A Raspberry Pi is a small single-board computer, which works similiar to a regular computer.
One of the difficulties we have to face is definitely to place all electric components as compact as possible within the space we have inside our waterproof enclosure.
Development of the ROV
Due to the fact, that we've already collected some experience in underwater robotics, we want to improve and professionalize what we do in comparison to our last ROV. This is referred to the hardware as well as to the software. You can find further information below.
At the moment, we're right in the middle of the development, concerning hardware and software.
Hardware
We use some bought, professional components from the company Blue Robotics for our ROV. These include some of our motors (T200 Thruster), the motor control units belonging to them (Basic ESC) and the watertight enclosure (Watertight Enclosure 4'').
Nevertheless, we have to construct a lot of things on our own, wherefore we use our 3D printer or build the components manually out of PVC, acrylic glass and other materials. Our 3D printer makes it possible to create individual components precisely adapted to our needs and the required measurements.
Software
All of our programming is done in the programming language Python. With its integrated GUI framework tkinter, we're building a broad user interface, which will run on our laptop later on. To control our ROV, we'll connect a PS4 controller to our laptop.
In the background of the Software, called backend, network connections to our two Raspberry Pis in the ROV are set up. We use them for livestreams of our cameras in and on our ROV and to transfer the control signals towards the ROV.