ROV Competitions - Ideas for Teams

I was involved with an ROV competition earlier this year. "Involved" isn't really the right word, but it's the best one I can come up with. Among other things I tried to help out where I could, didn't help out nearly enough, took too long making underwater video cameras to film the event (which I hope are recycled onto someone's ROV), showed up to volunteer at the competition, wound up judging instead, and because of an incomplete understanding of the rules I likely created a situation that compromised the event. I got to see a lot of extremely hard-working kids, some really unsportsmanlike nasty infighting among some adults, and an amazing display of chivalry on the part of one team leader in particular.

Not sure I'm willing to go through that again.

So I'm helping out the best way I can: by writing. Here are my observations on the competition, and what I would do if I was to build an ROV for the MATE competition:

1 - The whole point is to have a good time.

Let me rephrase that: The whole point is to have a good time! If you get wrapped around the axle worrying about scoring high in the competition, especially if you're a mentor, you're missing the point. When in doubt, go back to #1.

2 - If you build so specifically to the competition rules as written, you can potentially design yourself out of the ability to adapt to unexpected problems.

In one instance a mission prop was slightly shorter than the design spec called for. One team designed so closely to spec that their ROV didn't fit where it was supposed to go. Think I'm kidding? I'm not.

This mirrors the real world, though. A good example is an instrument we have at work, for which a designer made provisions for a 10.00mm deep hole to take an M5x10 screw. The thing bottomed out. We pulled the screw out, measured it, and it was about 10.5mm long. This is what happens when you roll a thread onto a screw blank. The designer never knew that. M5x9 screws were not an option, so we ground the things to length, cleaned up the ends, cleaned up the threads with a die, etc. No time for that during an ROV competition. Plan for the unexpected.

3 - The operator will become disoriented.

Let's face it. You're using an underwater camera to experience your environment. Unless you replace the lens on your camera you're using a tiny field of view to tell you where you are, what orientation you're in, whether you're facing the right way, etc. No matter how much you tell yourself, "I won't lose track," you will. Everyone did.

I've come up with all sorts of instrumentation to keep an operator on target. Six axis IMUs, electronic compass, pressure transducers, video overlay boards, you name it. Want to know the simple answer to this?

Get one of those little keychain ball compasses you get in the gumball machine, epoxy it in place in view of your camera. You now have a compass and an artificial horizon. If you position it midway up your video frame, you should be staring at an even horizon on the ball compass. If you're looking at the top, you're pointing down. If you're looking at the bottom, you're pointing up. And if you note the orientation before your team lowers the ROV into the water, you know which way to head to get back to your team.

A depth gauge is also easily had. Get a long thin tube. Close it at one end and place that end up. As you submerge, the tube will fill up slightly with water. Guess what? The level will change depending on depth. Mark it. Use a tape measure in the pool and get precise values. Not sensitive enough? Stick an air resevoir at the top so you get a bigger differential change with depth. With a little experimentation you can get something that's sensitive enough to give you resolution in inches. Mark it on the tube. Voila. Depth gauge.

These two instruments will give you 90% of what you need in order to maneuver your ROV out of a blind corner. I watched one team fail to realize they were nose-down and staring at a blank pool floor for almost five minutes. Way too much time in a 15 minute competition.

4 - Trust each other and delegate duties

If you can't trust each other, you're not a team. I didn't have first-hand of this in the ROV competition, but I've seen it numerous other places: Primadonnas don't make teams. Encourage competing designs. Plan time to test them. Find out what works and what doesn't before competition. Document your tests so you don't repeat them. Document what ideas you discard and why so you revisit the ones you dropped for time constraints but not the ones you dropped because they simply didn't pan out. If in doubt, pursue two ideas and test them in a head-to-head test. Chances are there will be a clear winner. Going with one person's ideas means if they're steering you in circles, it's in circles you will go.

5 - Test test test test test!

I've heard it told to me time and time again: In Battlebots, it isn't the better robot that wins, it's the more experienced driver. In auto racing, it isn't the faster car that wins, it's the better driver. In dogfighting, it's not the superior aircraft that wins, it's... you get the idea. If you never get time in the saddle, you will choke in competition.

Before committing to something like an ROV competition, have a test site picked out. A pool, a lake, even a cattle watering tank is better than nothing. Without the ability to test you will fail.

6 - Stay on task.

This one shouldn't need saying, but apparently it was the one real show-stopper. Everyone procrastinated, and it showed. The amazing story was that one team consisting of two people built an ROV in two weeks and actually got up there in points. The sad story was that most of the other teams procrastinated, so they more or less did the same. There was no need for this. There was plenty of time.

Personally, I think this goes back to #5. If there's the prospect of driving an ROV at the end of the build session every single day, provided there's new stuff to test, chances are there will be new stuff to test. Every... single... day... This is a carrot. Use it.

7 - Do your research (aka The Rant)

Now I'll get on my soap box and rant. And rant and rant and rant.

DO YOUR RESEARCH!

I can't even begin to describe how many people I talked to who asked, "Where do you get all this information?" I used Google. I read. I got on Yahoo! I read. I joined online forums and mailing lists. I read. I checked out books from the library. I read. What the heck, people? This is called doing your research.

What really amazed me was that it wasn't necessarily the students who were giving me blank stares about the idea of using Google for research, it was the mentors! It was the teachers!

Holy crap stack, Batman, there are literally thousands of people out there building ROVs not for competition, but for commercial use, for scientific research, for treasure hunting, for search and rescue, or just for the heck of it. And hundreds of them are online, reading email, writing web pages, answering questions, offering opinions, throwing out ideas, getting excited about what you are doing, and being a resource!

Before someone says that the Internet shouldn't be used for research, please let me correct you. We use it all the time at work. This is how we find out what other people are doing, and if their methods are better than what we're using. This is how we find out about new products that might make our workflow easier. This is how we get in contact with people who might eventually build stuff for us, or better yet design stuff for us. This is how a good percentage of my time is spent, and the benefits are enormous. If you want to teach kids how it's done in the so-called real world, this really is how it's done. It begins with a search.

This research can spare you months of wasted labor, because someone might already have tried your ideas out and either proved or disproved them. This research can spare you a blown competition because you might be able to read someone's blog where their ROV of similar designed for the following reasons... This research can spare you a lot of your operating budget if you find out before buying parts that parts X, Y, and Z aren't even waterproof! It's worth having everyone on the team scour the Internet for ideas for a solid week before they ever set foot in the workshop. Fish for ideas. Scratch off the bad ones. Underline the good ones. Bring them in and brainstorm. Then go back out with your plan and see if there's anything out there you can use to refine it.

If everyone did this, the competitions would be out of this world.


But enough of ranting. Go back to #1. Build. Dive. Enjoy. And dream of what you want to do next year.

-- Tom