SPECIAL EDITION:
Rhyme of the
Modern
Submariner
This month, we have the honor of
presenting the ROV-In-A-Box Kit
from !nventivity. ROV stands for
Remotely Operated Vehicle, and while
this can refer to a tethered vehicle that
tackles any sort of terrain, it very often
refers to an underwater vehicle, as was
the case with this kit. After covering
the AUVSI underwater robotics
competition in 2006, we knew that
there were competitions out there
that catered to these aquatic bots,
and we thought a competition would
be a much more exciting way of
testing the robot than surreptitiously
dunking it in the community pool. The
AUVSI competition, however, was
THE ROV-IN-A-BOX IN THE BOX.
solely for autonomous robots, and a
remotely operated vehicle wouldn’t
exactly fit into that category. After a
bit of searching, we stumbled upon
the MATE Competition — an underwater ROV competition sponsored by
the Marine Advanced Technology
Education Center. What’s more is that
the international championship was
sponsored by the Scripps Institute of
Oceanography at our very own
University of California, San Diego.
Several engineering student
organizations at UCSD are involved in
a number of design competitions, but
there was not yet a team for the MATE
event. We had the kit, the opportunity,
COLTER (L) AND BRIAN (R) WORKING
ON THE FRAME.
and the onus of the home turf advantage, so we really felt that the MATE
Competition was an opportunity that
we couldn’t pass up. All we had to do
now was get a team together.
Ocean’s Eleven and
Then Some
Evan is lucky enough to be a
part of UCSD’s Tau Beta Pi chapter,
California Psi. Tau Beta Pi is the
engineering honor society and UCSD’s
chapter pursues excellence in engineering through outreach, academic,
and social programs. Conspicuously
missing from TBP’s repertoire, though,
was a robotics team. Why a robotics
team? Because robotics is an interdisciplinary field that demands the
effort of engineers from every field of
study, and a robotics team would be
made up of the same cross sections of
engineers as Tau Beta Pi. By virtue of
his position as Publicity Officer, Evan
was able to organize meetings for a
robot team and soon a group of
talented engineering students had
coalesced around our ROV in a box,
and we were eager to take on the
challenge of MATE.
The ROV-in-a-box seemed like a
14 SERVO 08.2008
