Build your own remotely operated vehicle (ROV)!



Robots help oceanographers a lot!

Every year, more and more underwater robots are used by scientists at the University of Washington to learn new things about the ocean. The earliest oceanographers learned about the ocean by dangling scientific instruments like thermometers over the sides of sailing ships. During the 1900's, oceanographers began using submarines as vehicles to carry instruments with them into the deep. The submarines were exciting to use, but pretty expensive and a little dangerous. Even more recently, with the help of computers, it has become cheaper to use robots to make scientific measurements in the deep ocean.

Some underwater robots remain connected by a tether to the scientists on the sea's surface. These robots are known as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) because a human pilot is always communicating with the robotic vehicle through the tether, controlling the robot's actions even when it is very far away (remote).

There are now some amazing robots that you simply drop overboard with no tether at all! They are called autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). You just program their computers with instructions, put them into the water, and they observe the deep ocean for you. Meanwhile, you hope they make it back to the surface after completing their work!

You can try building your own ROV!

For the University of Washington School of Oceanography 2001 open house, we built a toy ROV for about $150 in parts, added a color camera (~$200-300), and deployed it in the fresh water of Portage Bay. Since then, the little ROV named "Delta" has visited Puget Sound a couple times, and even travelled to the San Juan Islands for a dip in Haro Strait. Most recently, it has been upgraded for the October, 2003, Oceanography open house. We replaced the 2 stiff 4-wire tethers with a single, thinner tether that has 8-wires, is more flexible, and quite a bit longer (100'). We also turned the bilge pumps from impellers to propellers by cutting off the impeller housing and replacing the impeller with a model airplane propeller. As a result, Delta is a lot more maneuverable.

Nevertheless, if you take a turn controlling the ROV you will probably agree that it can be pretty difficult to get it to do just what you want. Some ROV pilots become experts only after years of training. As oceanographers, we have to be patient with new robots and pilots, and are always thinking about how to make underwater vehicles more reliable, easier to operate, less expensive, and more effective tools for studying the oceans.

We built and upgraded our ROV by following the instructions in the great little book, "Build your own underwater robot (and other wet projects)," by Harry Bohm and Vickie Jensen (1997, Westcoast Wards, Vancouver, BC, Canada, try 604-731-5565). It is written for upper elementary and middle school students, but may interest high school students and adults, as well. It's cover is shown at left.

More information (hypertext links):

Preliminary list of parts and costs

Preliminary collection of images

Enter the NASA/NOAA national ROV competition!

This page can be accessed on-line at http://www.ocean.washington.edu/exploraquarium/rov/home.html