WOW! hello again guys, I haven't posted on this forum since I was in high school under "A.R.E.S._R.O.V." with my modular ROV concept I was working on then. I'm back now as an ME senior at U of M. Good to be back! I'm finally in a place where I can put more time back into my hobby projects and of course the underwater addiction struck me again. I have this idea gnawing at me for a more practical ROV layout for most users. I stated by establishing the use case for ROVs commonly built here:
Observe and interact with underwater structures and wildlife.
With that goal I thought about what would be needed to maximize the fun while doing this and came up with this list of goals:
A) first person camera view
B) long lasting operation time
C) easily transportable
D) no additional computer or laptop needed
E) reduced disturbance to wildlife for observing/capture/hunting
The design that seems to better satisfy these demands looks like this:
- schematic.png (82.94 KiB) Viewed 4329 times
As you can see in the schematic, the user would wear a FVP visor, and use a controller to operate the ROV from land wirelessly. The ROV will consist of a floating platform which can move like a boat for traversing to the dive location and for station keeping above the target. This barge houses all of the control electronics, batteries, transceivers, pumps for observer movement, and a small hoist for tether management. The observer is a small camera, light, and attachment platform which uses valves to release water pressurized in the barge for short distance movements. The small size and small low-noise thrusts will reduce the affect the viewer has on the target. this platform makes sense because the horizontal movements of ROVs from shore to target are usually much greater than the depth needed, ie you might drive 200m away from shore just to explore 20m deep. This fact means the tether can be much shorter as it only has to contribute to depth, and the wireless barge could have theoretically unlimited distance range. Having a large barge also means all sensitive parts can be kept above water, meaning less protection needed. This will lower the mass and cost of the craft and allow for much larger batteries to increase range. This also allows the barge to have larger thrusters for long range high speed movements to a target, and a small pressurizing pump will supply the pressure for reaction control thrusters on the observer, which can be quite small. Finally the observer can be hoisted to different depths and be made heavy so that it simply hangs, reducing buoyancy complications and making the vertical positioning much more precise. The observer can be contained within the barge during transport so that the entire system will be compact and easily moved with as few separate bits as possible.
I will eventually get to CAD and make the whole thing more clear but I wanted to hear everyone's opinion on the idea
Thanks!
I'll have to look into the details more as I mold the idea, but I just wanted a high level evaluation of the basic layout. if there are no glaring issues with the base concept then I can begin refining each detail. Thanks!