Low-cost underwater remotely operated vehicle.
I built a rudimentary, low-cost tethered vehicle is made of PVC tubing and uses bilge pumps as thrusters along with six other students. Our interdisciplinary team installed a camera and an internet control system allow students to fully control the vehicle and to rapidly prototype new ideas on a simple engineering platform. Throughout the year, we constructed a low-cost but robust Remotely Operating Vehicle which consisted of PVC pipes as a frame, six thrusters for propulsion and maneuvering, a tether which supplies controlled power from a 12 volt DC power source, floats, and a controller using push buttons to control the thrusters. The robot sent a stream of video so that a recording was displayed on deck. I configured and tested a safety system for the robot. This involves programming a BasicStamp microcontroller, interfacing relays and setting up communications between the basic stamp and DSP.
