Background Information

For centuries humans have had a certain curiosity about the work and what it is made of and have worked to figure out answers to settle their curiosity. There has come a point though that a human can not always fulfill the requirements needed to delve in to problems that they wish to solve; but the curiosity doesn’t cease. Some issues that scientist and explorers have faced is the incapability to reach places where they want to document such as volcanoes, deep ocean areas, deep portions of the earth, and even outer space. To solve this problem we have created something that can go there for us and even have a set of tools and abilities to collect data and complete tasks. These inventions are robots. One specific sect of robots, underwater ROVs, is concerned with underwater obstacles and has been designed to withstand these obstacles. The underwater ROV has been used to explore vast spaces of oceans for longer periods of time. With the use of these tools humans have been able to view portions of the ocean never seen before and have collected long term data, such as temperature, and salinity, over long periods of time all over the world’s water. All of this is possible because of the unique ability of robots to function constantly and automatically in very specific situations in which they are placed. Although many new areas have been reached both literally and technologically speaking, there is always room for improvement. Constantly new developments are made to further the new age of robots.

This problem has been generated on the real world scale with problems faced by professionals in their careers. However when looking specifically at the problem faced by the Systems Engineering students you are looking at a contest with specific limitations and specifications to fill. This contest, though, branches off from real world scenarios due to the fact that new ideas and methods will be needed in order to complete certain obstacles.

The underwater ROV contest is held each year. Students compete in several areas in order to win. These areas include presentation, teamwork, completion of the underwater tasks, and many more. In order to do well in this competition the robot must be well rounded with several capabilities. In previous competitions ROVs have had to hastily reach the bottom of the pool, and quickly retrieve items as well as take readings of temperature, salinity, or things of that nature.

Over the course of the next year our team of three will be totally concerned with successfully completing an entire, fully functional R.O.V.. Each part, although being planned and built separately, have to meld together perfectly and work well with each other. The three parts of the ROV, which have been split up between the three of us, include the electrical input and output, hull, buoyancy, and propulsion, and the arm and claw.

The claw is a key part in winning the competition because it is the piece which will be completing the tasks. For example, in the MATE competition last year, the claws on the ROVs had to pick up “crabs”. Because MATE does not release the specifications for the objects that are needed to be picked up until past the planning process, the ROV arm has to be flexible in design. With this in mind, as well as all the other background information given, I must be not only creative but also time effective and flexible.