ScottROV1

Here is a summary of sorts, as it stands today 2 September 2011:

My "individual project" for the third year of my electronic engineering course is an underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle). This means it moves around underwater but is controlled from out of the water by an operator. The operator uses the "top" controller which has 2 joysticks, some switches and a video screen. The top controller sends control instructions to the "bottom" controller located on the ROV via a cable known as a "tether".

The tether is made up of a power cable (I'm using some speaker cable with 2 x 2.5 mm squared CSA (cross sectional area), and a data cable (I am using an ethernet cable which has 4 twisted pairs).

The control instructions are simply to turn the individual motors on or off, or switch instructions eg lights on or off.

On the top controller I am using an mbed which is connected to the two joysticks, three switches, an LCD display screen, a temperature sensor, some status LED's, and a warning buzzer (for leak alarms).

On the bottom controller I am using another mbed that will connect to the 7 thruster motors, another temperature sensor, leak detectors, and an IMU board. There is also a video camera.

I am using 7 thrusters for a variety of reasons. I am using 4 for horizontal movement, and 3 for vertical movement.

For horizontal movement I am using 4 thrusters that are placed at a 45 degree angle to the frame. By turning on any two at a time I get forward, reverse, spin left, spin right, pan left, and pan right. I could also use the minimum configuration of 3 with one horizontal on the left and one horizontal on the right to go forward and backwards and spin around, and one horizontal at 90 degrees to pan left and right. I decided the four thruster combination would be better as it is simpler wiring (uni-directional motor control rather than bi-directional) and that the symmetrical arrangement with counter-rotating propellers would minimise any twist caused by a single pan left/right thruster.

For vertical control I am planning to use 3 bi-directional thrusters. There will be one on either side, and one at the rear. But why three instead of one? When initially describing this project to my course leader he thought that with a single vertical thruster the project was too easy so I came up with a more complicated project: include a control system.

Control systems are fascinating to me. CNC routers and cutters that I sold for 15 years all use control systems for accurate positioning. So I decided I would add a self-levelling control system to my ROV. Imagine I have a gripper arm at the front (which I won't at least initially). If it picks up something, the centre of gravity and centre of buoyancy change and the ROV will tilt forward. This means trying to control it accurately will be very difficult - unless it has an inbuilt stability system - one that self-levels it by adjusting power to the three vertical thrusters!

I am planning to use an IMU (an inertial measurement unit) to sense the tilt level. I have purchased one from another mbed developer that was designed for autonomous flying. It has a 3 axis accelerometer, a 3 axis gyro, and a 3 axis magnetometer. I don't think I need all that but I have it on the board (http://mbed.org/users/atommota/notebook/imu-daughterboard/). It simply plugs into the mbed and is the same size.

For the thrusters I am following these instructions: http://www.homebuiltrovs.com/howtobilgeconversion.html

Now, as expected, the project so far has been a series of challenges to overcome, with more presenting themselves every day. Yesterday I got a motor running under mbed / MOSFET control, with PWM, which was an important step along the way for me.

One of today's challenges is to work on the data comms between the top and bottom controllers. I have got the two mbeds communicating with each other when separated by short wires. I then used the 30m data wire and the comms were still fine, but they shared the same ground, so I then tried with their grounds also separated by the 30m. This also worked fine, but with no motors running (and no current draw) there was virtually no voltage drop across the tether so the grounds were basically the same.

The next step today is to test the comms whilst a motor is running (I can only run one motor at a time til I get my next delivery of parts). With only one motor running there should be a voltage drop of about 2V across the tether so we'll see if that effects the comms. If it does I'll need to look into RS232 or RS485 systems which I think sort of add a layer on top of what I am using at the moment, which is simply UART to UART.

One of the biggest challenges is to create a watertight enclosure for the electronics. I don't have any real access to machining resources, and my budget is very limited, so I am planning to use 110mm diameter underground drainage pipe and fittings. This is a relatively cheap option (but will still cost around £50). My original goal was to aim for a 30m maximum depth but I think now I will simply try for 5m (the depth of the local diving pool) and when I get some money later I'll get a proper pressure vessel manufactured from acrylic / aluminium / stainless steel.

Anyway, there's some information for you. Any questions?

/media/uploads/scotto/top.pdf


12 comments on ScottROV1:

02 Sep 2011

Interesting project. I'm looking forward to how it all works out.

Keep us updated!

28 Oct 2011

Update October 28

So it's taking longer than I expected, but I am making progress. Since I wrote the first post in the beginning of September I have built my top controller using veroboard:

/media/uploads/scotto/_scaled_img_6397.jpg

I have also worked on the bottom controller which consists primarily of motor drive circuitry:

/media/uploads/scotto/bottom.pdf

Tonight I wired the bottom controller up using a breadboard and successfully tested the RS232 comms, the 4 horizontal thrusters, and the 3 vertical thrusters:

/media/uploads/scotto/_scaled_img_6427.jpg

So, I am going forward I think.

06 Nov 2011

Update 6 November

This weekend I assembled the frame, machined the bilge pumps into thrusters with propellors, and then mounted them onto the frame:

/media/uploads/scotto/_scaled_img_6439.jpg

21 Feb 2012

Update 21 February 2012

Despite my other studies, progress is being made. The bottom controller is now off breadboard and onto stripboard, and seems to working properly. In the image below you can clearly see the mbed sitting nicely atop Tim Marvin's IMU board.

/media/uploads/scotto/_scaled_img_6834.jpg

Work is now progressing on getting the water-proof enclosure up and running.

18 Mar 2012

Update 18 March 2012

First voyage today ....

/media/uploads/scotto/_scaled_img_6881.jpg

Seems to be leak proof, at least at shallow depths, and moves around horizontally as expected. Vertical control was a problem due to one of the vertical thrusters rotating in the wrong direction, Fortunately that is a simple software fix.

There is quite a bit of fine tuning of ballast and buoyancy to do yet to get a nice stable position in the water. I intend to work on that next Sunday in the pool.

Anyway, progress is certainly being made.

18 Mar 2012
18 Mar 2012

Looks neat Scott. Which camera are you using?

18 Mar 2012

Martin Smith wrote:

Looks neat Scott. Which camera are you using?

A CMOS board camera from Sparkfun:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8739

I bought one a few months ago and it was working fine initially, but then a few weeks ago the image got dramatically darker (not sure why) and made it completely unusable. I have sent it back to be replaced but they are currently out of stock. When it was working, it was fine for the purpose.

10 Apr 2012

Update 10 April 2012

Video from beneath the surface:

10 Apr 2012

Awesome video! You have made great progress!!

04 May 2012

Update 4 May 2012

So the project, from a university point-of-view, is now finished. Here is my final report: /media/uploads/scotto/project_report.pdf.

Immediately after submitting the report I found this information about the new version of MATLAB which, to me, indicates I was reasonable close to finishing the characterising, if only I had been able to perform better measurements: http://blogs.mathworks.com/seth/2012/03/28/estimating-continuous-time-transfer-functions-with-system-identification-toolbox/?s_cid=_fb_wall_4-25-12_estimating_time_tbx.

But despite finishing the project per-se, it is my intention to continue to try to get some useful measurements and continue the system dynamics analysis.

Thanks to all those who offered encouragement and support along the way: in particular Tim Marvin (for his IMU) and Chris Styles from mbed.org.

24 Jun 2016

Hi scott, has the ROV been completed?

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