ROV is an underwater remotely operated vehicle designed to perform measurement and object manipulation tasks for the 2016 Marine Advanced Technology (MATE) Explorer Class Competition. The chassis system is designed out of impact absorbing, buoyant HDPE. The high modularity of the chassis system means all subsystems can be modularly mounted in a variety of locations and orientations, and the entire chassis can be broken down by hand, with no, or minimal, hand tools needed. Included are an electrical control box with convective liquid cooling, eight shrouded, vectored thrusters, temperature and pressure sensors, four analog camera modules, pneumatic manipulators, and dis-connectable tether. The electrical system regulates from 48VDC input to 24, 12, and 3.3 VDC for on-board electronics, thruster operation, pneumatic control, 6-axis IMU feedback control, camera feed switching, and a liquid cooling system.
This requires at least 40W of heat dissipation, accomplished via the closed loop GPU waterblock with pump and radiator. Thruster shrouds are extruded ABS and utilize friction clamping to hold and orient commercially available, waterproof, bilge pump motors. Custom couplers attach propellers to the motor output shafts, and each thruster is mounted to a modular plate that allows for either angle adjustments of 15 degree increments or placement adjustment of 1/2 inch increments forward and backward along the motor axis. Custom electronic PCBs are stacked and connected to feed power directly to all components. The communication board incorporates wireless Bluetooth or USB programming, Ethernet communication, four camera inputs and two switchable output feeds, 16 pwm, pneumatic valve, or servo pins, and I2C breakout connections for sensors. The regulating board distributes power to the communication board, has temperature sensors on the regulators, and eight high-current custom H-bridge circuits, with current monitoring, to operate thruster motors.