ROV Mark II

Our second ROV, with which we've also participated in 2018's competition (2017–18)

Here you can see our ROV in its final version. Only the swimming noodles, which we've attached to the chassis to get enough buoyancy, are missing in the picture.

 

This ROV is completely different to our previous one. The chassis is bigger and much more stable and the waterproof enclosure offers more space for our electronics as well. Furthermore we now use eight motors instead of six which are arranged diagonal. Thereby we hope to get more stability in driving.

On the right-hand side, you can see our ROV underwater. This video was required as qualification for the international competition.

 

In this video we demonstrated that we are able to fulfill certain tasks with our ROV underwater.


A look inside our ROV

All the electronics is placed inside our watertight enclosure. The single components are mounted on a detachable acrylic sheet. What you can see in the foreground is a Raspberry Pi, a single-board computer, which we use to control our ROV.

These are our four motor control units, each one is connected to two motors. The bronze-colored tops are passive cooling units to prevent the circuit boards from overheating.


Development of the ROV

At first, we planned the chassis of our ROV. In the process, we mainly had to consider the measurements of the watertight enclosure, in which our electronics are placed. 

 

 

We've constructed our chassis from usual PVC sheets because these are stable and relatively light at the same time. This matters because the weight of our ROV is also important.

 

We had to copy our draft on the sheets and cut it out, as you can see on the right.


That's how the chassis looks when it's build together.

But the electronics within the watertight enclosure is still missing. The tightness is ensured by pressing the outer acryl glass disks against a rubber seal. There are cable bushings at the back of the enclosure, so that we can connect our electronics placed inside. All the cables are put together in a single tether and led out of the water.

You can see a small gripper in the picture as well which is required for the competition tasks.

Of course, we need to manage the programming of our ROV as well. Therefore, we made it possible to control our ROV with a PS4 controller.

 

As we've already been able to assemble everything, we were still working on some details to further improve our ROV. For instance, it was quite a big challenge to mount our enclosure ideally on the chassis.

 

Even in the final stage, it took us much time to optimize our ROV until it was ready for the competition.


Further information

If you want to get a deeper insight into the technical background of our ROV, you can check out our Technical Documentation. This is a document, in which we present our ROV in detail, give an account of its development and expound its technical details.

 

This and other documents are part of the tasks we have to fulfill for the competition and which are also assessed.

Download
Technical Documentation 2018
Wilhelm-Filchner-Schule-Wolfhagen_G-Kare
Adobe Acrobat Dokument 3.1 MB