Courtesy of Steve Allardyce
Courtesy of Rosslyn Shanks
“The competition didn't start off the best for us, because something has happened to our ROV in transit. When we powered it up for the first time it blew the whole low voltage side of the system. This killed the cameras, the lights, the camera servo, three voltage regulators, the manipulator and the power to the on board processor. We spent the whole of the first day rebuilding the circuits of the ROV with the spares we had, but then discovered that our spare camera was faulty. After a trip to Walmart and two striped apart CCTV cams later we had cameras. We got everything back together and working on the second day just 45 minutes before our first run where we scored 80 points. Unfortunately we have missed our practice run because of the camera problems. For the seconded run we trimmed the ROV better and got 120 points. This finally got us to the 9th place in the pool placing. We achieved this with a not working manipulator. Our team ended up at 9th place overall in the competition with high scores for our poster, report and engineering presentation. We received three awards: “No guts, no glory” (for persevering and fixing the major problem we had), “Best bang for buck” (for getting the most points with the smallest build cost), and “Design elegance” (for the best ROV design)”Matthew Head summarized the Team’s challenges and experiences.
Well done guys! It’s a great achievement, especially with having to troubleshoot all those problems on the spot. It made your ROV challenge even more realistic. Conditions in real life are never perfect either and operation in the field can also pose their challenges.
Courtesy of Steve Allardyce
The Swimming Haggis features a multi-purpose claw for deploying the sensor array, retrieving debris and accessing the cargo container. Two custom designed light boards coated in electrical insulating lacquer provide illumination for investigating inside wrecks. A measuring tape customized with metal hoops allows measurement of the shipwreck whilst a skid is specifically designed for collecting the plate from inside.
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