2012 Project Goals

Unlike past years where the goal of the UMaine Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was to make it to competition, this years designing team has set an ambitious goal of incorporating a composite body onto the robot. The composite in question will allow for a great deal of added possiblities for future innovation in the Robotics field. If the composite skin is a success the next step would be to continue building a more robust control system.

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Project Description

A University of Maine Mechanical Engineering senior design group is designing and building an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). The 2012 team will not compete in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center’s annual international ROV competition in June 2012. The 2012 team chose to go in a different direction and design an unique ROV with team-defined parameters and objectives.

The University of Maine Mechanical Engineering Department is excited to establish this project and put Maine on the map for producing effective underwater engineering designs and creative engineers. This project will have a relatively new to the field propulsion system. Using the flapping foil design.

Marine Science is a difficult and fascinating field of study. By establishing an underwater ROV program at the University of Maine, future mechanical engineer students will be able to build on and improve the design of the machine as well as gain experience working on a complicated and challenging project.

Proposed Design

Sea Turtles provide a perspective body type that could allow us to have a significat volume to work with as well as a large amount of control because of the flapping foil propulsion system and the potential degrees of freedom available. They are mainly herbavourous in there later years.

ROVs can be large and invasive to the surrounding environment. The desire is to make a ROV that can enter marine habitats without disturbing the wild life. With this, we can obtain the most accurate data of marine animal behaviors. The best way to accomplish this goal was to simulate an already existing creature that lives amongst them. It was decided that the final design should be modeled around a sea turtle due to its acceptance among other marine creatures as well as the lack of already existing designs.