Open house, March, 2001
Build your own remotely operated vehicle (ROV)!
Robots help oceanographers a lot!
Every year, more and more underwater robots are used by scientists at
the University of Washington to learn new things about the ocean.
A century ago, most oceanographers learned about the ocean by
dangling scientific instruments over the sides of sailing ships.
During the 1900's, oceanographers began using submarines as vehicles to carry
instruments with them into the deep. The submarines were exciting to
use, but pretty expensive and a little dangerous. Even more recently,
with the help of computers, it has become cheaper to use robots to make
scientific measurements in the deep ocean.
Some underwater robots remain connected throughout their dives to the
scientists on the sea's surface by a tether. These robots are known as
remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) because a human pilot is always
communicating with the robotic vehicle through the tether,
controlling the robot's actions
even when it is very far away. There are now some amazing robots that
you simply drop overboard with no tether at all! You just tell them
what to do and hope they make it back to the surface after completing
their work.
Feel what it is like to use an underwater robot!
For the University of Washington School of Oceanography open house, we
have built a toy ROV for about $150 in parts, added a color camera
available for about $200-300), and deployed it in the fresh water of
Portage Bay. Take a turn controlling the ROV and you will probably
agree that it can be pretty difficult to get it to do just what you
want. Some ROV pilots become experts only after years of training.
As oceanographers, we have to be patient with the new robots and pilots,
and are always thinking about how to make underwater vehicles that
help us learn more about the oceans through less expensive scientific
research.
You can try building your own ROV!
We built our ROV by following the instructions in the great little
book, "Build your own underwater robot (and other wet projects),"
by Harry Bohm and Vickie Jensen (1997, Westcoast Wards, Vancouver, BC, Canada).
It is written for upper elementary and middle school students, but may
interest high school students and adults, as well. It's cover is shown
at right and you can order a copy by sending email to Vickie Jensen
at vjensen@bc.sympatico.ca
More pictures of pieces of the ROV are available
here!