Builder's Forum

This section is for people building an OpenROV to discuss techniques, list challenges, and ask questions.

Propulsion

Without a propulsion system, an ROV would just be an anchor with a camera strapped to it. Propulsion systems are often challenging to design because they usually involve moving parts and electronics that must be outside the "dry area" of the submarine and must therefore be independently waterproof. Here, we'll discuss ideas that may make moving forward with your ROV a bit more straight forward.

Water/ Pressure Proofing

One of the things that makes underwater ROVs more challenging to engineer then other telerobots is that they have to be able to withstand great amounts of pressure. In fact, for every 10m (~33ft) of depth an ROV submarine goes, it will experience an additional atmosphere (100kPa or 14.7PSI) of pressure. That means that if your ROV is 100 feet underwater, each square inch of the ROV will have to withstand 45 pounds of water pushing against it! If that weren't hard enough to design around, water itself (especially salt water) can be very damaging to many materials and an cause them to fail. Water can cause electrical components to short and metal to corrode, so knowing ways to protect (or avoid using) water sensitive parts is very important. Here are some tips for how to make your ROV ready for the dangers of depth!

Tethers

The whole point of telerobots (such as ROVs) is that you can do things in places without having to go there yourself. Of course, telerobtic exploration would not be possible if there weren't a way to communicate between the robot and the operator, so establishing a good, dependable communication link is essential. For telerobots on the surface of the earth, in the air, or in space, radio is the best way to send information back and forth, but underwater, radio waves (especially at higher frequencies which are needed for high bandwidth communication) can hardly travel any distance at all. To solve this problem, ROVs use long lengths of wire (called tethers) to send and receive data. A secondary advantage of using a teather is that it can also be used to send power to the ROV so the operator need not worry about batteries going dead.

Onboard Electronics

Software

This section is for discussion of all software used for OpenROV.

Payloads

User Interface

Adventures

Where would you like to go with OpenROV? This is the spot for adventure ideas that either you would like to go to yourself, or that you think it would be neat for others with OpenROVs to explore.