This isn’t out work, but it was so inspirational for us we thought we should hang a lantern on it. (Stephen was nice enough to let us use pictures of his work here, but go check out his site – homebuiltrovs.com.
The book Build Your Own Underwater Robot, and Other Wet Projects was first published in the 1980s kindling an interest and love of the underwater world in generations of future scientists and engineers. A reprint of the book is totally worth tracking down to read.
However we didn’t encounter the book first, we encountered the designs in it on homebuiltrovs.com. The Seafox ROV is their take on one of the designs from Build Your Own Underwater Robot. They site even documents a round of changes based on fixing pain points encountered during the ROVs use.
Frankly, getting started building underwater robotics is terrifying. It shouldn’t be, but there are all the issues of land-based robotics – combined with the ever-present chance of a leak ruining months of work. For autonomous drones there is always the possibility of loosing your work forever. It can be daunting, especially with expensive drones. The Seafox was one of those designs that was just so cool it got us building anyway.
Our very first underwater robotics projects were actually us looking at the Seafox and saying – how could we update that design now that 3D printers make making custom parts possible. Sites like this did a lot to finally get us making “wet projects”, so we thought it would be good to point people that way. If you are thinking about building underwater electronics checking out their how to page is a must.