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A little introduction to submarine vehicles
The concept of an underwater boat has roots deep in history: there are some ancient paintings of men using some sticks to
breathe underwater for hunting, or even divers employed for military use in the 5th century BC.
First working prototypes of structures began to be designed in the 16th century but they have not been realised for hundred years, when some submersibles started to work succesfully (without considering the first one, which sank in mud).
From those years to the second half of 19th century, submersibles and submarines (used mostly for exploring underwater) slowly evolved, changing shapes, weight and technology; but apporaching to the WWs the warlike development started to take care about it, giving a great thrust to the world of underwater vehicles.
With the great evolution of technology, more and more innovation were introduced and new reasons found to create new kind of underwater vehicles: in this scenario were created ROVs.
What is a ROV?
ROV stands for Remotely Operated (underwater) Vehicles: it's a tethered underwater vehicle used for many jobs(scientific research, offshore extraction, military use, deep water exploration, etc.)These vehicles are highly manoeuvrable, thanks to their dimensions, and unmanned: the ROVis remotely controlled by operators (who are usually on a boat), that permits the ROV to operate in a wide range of dangerous or problematic situations. This vehicle is connected to the controller with an umbilical cable that provides (usually) bi-directional communication (to control the robot and to recive information, such as video stream) and energy supply (when no batteries are installed on board).
Why building a ROV?
There are many reasons to use a ROV, as already said: as it allows to work remotely underwater, many industries which operates offshore use them to extract hydrocarbon or repair underwater structures.
Obviusly there are a lot of military uses, such as remove mines or rescue people blocked in damaged submarines, but a lot of people built them for hobby, becouse it rapresent a interesting challange under many aspects in fact there are many disciplines needed to built a ROV such as mechanics and electronic.
BUILDING OUR SUBMARINE VEHICLE
Making the chassis
Control systems and wiring
FIRST IMMERSION TEST
First test in water
Immersion at 2x speed
Latest update on 03/03/2014
© Colonna S. - Cheng Hivai R. - Cossettini A. - Rollo T. - Locatelli A. - Scarsini M. - Università degli Studi di Udine - a.a. 2012/2013