Join ROV
Visit our info events and apply to join using our application form!
6:30PM, BHEE 129
1:00PM, POTR 234
We're looking for members for every part of the team, including many brand new projects!
Mechanical
Design a capable, general vehicle in the fall before competition manual release and a shift to developing mission specific tools. Virtually all components are custom designed and manufactured in-house, often with the CNC machines on campus at the BIDC. The vehicle is a significant integration challenge with interesting considerations for buoyancy, stability, structure, versatility, corrosion, dynamics, etc. In recent seasons, we have been advancing efforts to model structural components to reduce mass, and are now turning to the challenging modeling problems of CFD and 6DOF controls!
Skills You'll Learn
- SolidWorks
- Structural analysis and FEA
- Integrated system design
- Design for manufacture and assembly
New Projects We're Tackling
- Reducing mass with even more structural simulation!
- Hydrodynamics calculations and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
- Controls (Full-state feedback, drag is non-linear and coupled!)
- Waterproofing motors to make our own custom thrusters
- Custom robotic arm for precise manipulation tasks
Electrical
Design an entire custom electronics stack from scratch. Both power and logic electronics systems are built from the ground up around a Raspberry Pi and the competition-specified tethered power. Take a printed circuit board (PCB) through the entire design life cycle: schematic, layout, populated board, testing, integration, and combined stack bringup. It's an exciting challenge to design boards for thermal, physical, and component constraints all while working to maximize performance and maintain simplicity!
Skills You'll Learn
- Schematic Design
- Board Layout
- EAGLE
- GitHub
- System Integration
- Logic and Power Electronics
New Projects We're Tackling
- Full system efficiency calculations
- Combining external sensors with our custom boards from initial design
- More custom firmware projects (we have a dedicated embedded software team!)
- New sensors to enable advanced controls
- Custom ESCs!
Software
Write software to bring custom electronics and mechanics to life on-vehicle, produce an effective pilot interface, and automate vehicle control. Our team's high degree of custom electronics design increases the scope of software to work with embedded systems integration. Additional software work will be driven by implementation of improved controls and to build new CV algorithms for mission tasks and general localization!
Skills You'll Learn
- Python
- ROS
- Linux
- GitHub
- Embedded systems (CAN, SPI, I2C, etc.)
- Frontend (React, Electron)
- Computer vision
New Projects We're Tackling
- Rebuilding entire backend framework to upgrade to ROS2
- More computer vision development to operate with the challenges of being underwater (low saturation, changing conditions, diffraction, etc.)
- Stereo camera enabled 3D localization! (important step to closing the loop with effective controls development)
- Support implementation of new controls algorithms from software perspective
- Improve data logging from our custom thruster
- Better package frontend software for automatic boot up and easy user interface