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Latis II Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle Technical Report

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FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS<br />

Throughout the entire design process the ROV<br />

Team had to continuously change, alter and in<br />

some cases completely remove or disregard<br />

design components and ideas. Some of these<br />

ideas, if they had been followed through, could<br />

have made great designs. The following are<br />

some design ideas the team would like to see<br />

either pursued and integrated or improved<br />

upon.<br />

PROPULSION<br />

Early in the design of the prototype the team<br />

battled with designing the best propulsion<br />

system for the ROV. Ideas ranged from belts<br />

and flippers to hydraulics and pneumatics. One<br />

idea that continuously surfaced, however, is<br />

that of dynamic thrusters. With dynamic<br />

thrusters, the same thrusters from Seabotix<br />

could be used but instead of being statically<br />

mounted to the body of the ROV they would be<br />

mounted to rotatable plates such that they<br />

could turn up to 360deg. This would allow a<br />

single thruster to control at least two axis of<br />

motion instead of just one when statically<br />

mounted. Servos or any kind of motor<br />

electrically driven or otherwise could be used to<br />

rotate the thruster. The team would be able to<br />

literally double their effectiveness with each<br />

thruster and therefore cut the number of<br />

thrusters, and motor drivers in half. The<br />

downside of this is making the device that<br />

would have to turn the thruster and then<br />

integrating the extra control specifications into<br />

the control program.<br />

17<br />

LATIS <strong>II</strong><br />

TECHNICAL REPORT<br />

WATERPROOFING<br />

Being one of the most, if not the most, difficult<br />

problems plaguing the ROV team;<br />

waterproofing techniques and design could be<br />

improved. If the design had taken into account<br />

more water tight compartments and less thruwall<br />

connections the waterproofing would have<br />

been much easier. Furthermore, using less<br />

electronics would also help in this respect (i.e.<br />

hydraulic or pneumatic propulsion/power<br />

system that is already inherently waterproof).<br />

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID (KISS)<br />

Even with the team’s best efforts to try and<br />

make the design as simple as possible without<br />

compromising function, the project still proved<br />

to be far too complicated to complete in the<br />

time allotted and with the people and resources<br />

available. The team would like to see future<br />

teams drastically cut down on the complexity of<br />

the manufactured parts and the overall design.<br />

Although many pre-made parts were<br />

researched and considered for the ROV design,<br />

a huge number of components still had to be<br />

custom fabricated. Taking less time and effort<br />

to make custom parts would leave more time to<br />

practice with the ROV and prepare it for<br />

competition.

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