Faculty of Engineering Suez Canal University

ADMIRAL ROV SCU team Ismailia

Team members:

Ahmed Abd-Elhalim

Ahmed Jaber

Ahmed Soliman

Amr Shata

Aya Mohamed

Ehab Abd-Allah

Hassan Mahmoud

Karim Gamal

Mahmoud Abd-Elkader

Mahmoud Gamal

Mahmoud Saied

Mahmoud Samy

Mohamed Mahmoud

Mohamed Mohamed

Mohamed Salem

Mentors:

Prof. Dr. Ahmed Magdi

2

Table of Contents

1-Abstract ........................................................................................... 3

2-The Team ........................................................................................ 3

3-(Admiral ROV) ............................................................................... 5

3-1 Rationale ..................................................................................................................................6

3-2 Vehicle Systems: .......................................................................................................................6

3.2.1 Thrusters Control (Appendix 3) .................................................................................................... 6

3.2.2Frame design ................................................................................................................................. 7

3.2.3Thrusters design: ........................................................................................................................... 7

3-3 Electrical System.......................................................................................................................8

3.3.1 Data Transmission (Appendix 1) .................................................................................................. 8

3.3.2 Cameras ....................................................................................................................................... 9

3.3.3 Power (Appendix 2) ...................................................................................................................... 9

3-4 Arm Design: ............................................................................................................................ 10

3-5 Two PC gamepads:.................................................................................................................. 10

3.5.1 Using the JAVA for utilizing the gamepad .................................................................................. 10

3.5.2The gamepad for the body of the ROV ....................................................................................... 11

4-Challengs&Solutions: ................................................................ 13

5- Troubleshooting: ....................................................................... 15

6- Future improvement ................................................................ 15

7-Reflections / Experience .......................................................... 16

8-Lessons Learned ......................................................................... 16

9-references ..................................................................................... 16

10- Acknowledgments .................................................................. 17

11-Appendices ................................................................................. 18

Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................................... 18

Appendix 2 ................................................................................................................................... 19

Appendix 3 ................................................................................................................................... 20

12-photo gallery ............................................................................. 21

3

1-Abstract

Admiral ROV is made of PVC pipes, which are smooth and light in weight. The

stability of the ROV has been taken in account while distributing parts on the ROV, The ROV’s

bouncy can be easily changed by adding or removing air bags at the top.

The five propellers can easily move the ROV in many directions. The waterproofing is

made of PVC pipes containing the item to be isolated. We control each thruster individually

to move the ROV. The arm is made of “Meccano” parts. It has many degrees of freedom to

easily grab and hold things.

“A remotely operated vehicle (ROV): is a tethered underwater vehicle. They are common

in deepwater industries such as offshore hydrocarbon extraction. An ROV may sometimes be

called a remotely operated underwater vehicle to distinguish it from remote control vehicles

operating on land or in the air. ROVs are unoccupied, highly maneuverable and operated by a

person aboard a vessel. They are linked to the ship by a tether (sometimes referred to as an

umbilical cable), a group of cables that carry electrical power, video and data signals back and

forth between the operator and the vehicle. High power applications will often use hydraulics

in addition to electrical cabling. Most ROVs are equipped with at least a video camera and

lights. Additional equipment is commonly added to expand the vehicle’s capabilities. These

may include sonars, magnetometers, a still camera, a manipulator or cutting arm, water

samplers, and instruments that measure water clarity, light penetration and temperature“.

2-The Team

Suez Canal University – faculty of engineering

Electrical Engineering Department

Ahmed Abd-Elhalim Ehab Abd-Allah Karim Gamal

4

Mahmoud Saied Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamed Mohamed

Communications and Electronics Engineering Department

Ahmed Jaber Ahmed Soliman Amr Shata

Aya mohamed Mahmoud Abd-Elkader Mohamed Salem

Mechanical Power Engineering Department

Hassan Mahmoud Mahmoud Samy

5

Computer and Control Department

Mahmoud Gamal

3-(Admiral ROV)

Holding pictures of ROV with 3-D and real photos

3-D Isometric Real Isometric

Front photo Side photo

6

3-1 Rationale

Engineering projects must have budgets, deadlines and specific client needs,

and as this was our first participation in mate competition.

We had focused on certain goals while building ADMIRAL ROV, which were:

Moving the ROV in many directions.

Making an arm that can grab and move things easily.

An easy control of the ROV.

Using recycled and re-used items as possible as we can.

Our individual missions were:

Task #1: Survey the shipwreck site

Task #2: Removing fuel oil from the shipwreck

3-2 Vehicle Systems:

3.2.1 Thrusters Control (Appendix 3)

While designing our ROV, we thought of two methods of control according to

what will be sent to the ROV. We called them Direction control and Individual motor

control. We believed that we have to change the speed and the direction of each

thruster while controlling the ROV, so we decided to go for an intelligent micro-

controller.

Methods of control:

1-Direction control method:

In this method we had planned to send directions to the ROV, so we control

more than one motor at a time to get the desired direction. Imagine that you have a

PS2 Controller in your hand, and you are playing an interesting but easy video game.

When you press the up arrow or move the analog stick forward, the ROV should

move forward and so on. We were very excited about this method because; it will

ease the control of the ROV during the competition.

7

2-Individual motor control method:

In this method we just send the speed and the direction of each motor form

the control room to the controller on the ROV, This method is very close to the way a

pilot drives a helicopter, In summary we control each motor individually.

3.2.2Frame design

We have made the frame design simple as possible as we can, we used re-

cycled PVC pipes, the frame specifications are shown in the table below:

Property Length Width Height Weight Value 65 cm 40 cm 35 cm 20 Kg

The drag force of a unit length of a ¾“PVC pipe is (30.64 Newton) for the given

density, we made the drag force in a function of velocity where (F=30.64 V^2), then

the power was (P=30.64 V^3) as shown.

The relation between Power and Velocity Frame Design

3.2.3Thrusters design:

We used five thrusters to control the ROV movement, the one with the

highest torque is used to move the ROV in the vertical direction ; upwards and

downwards , the other four thrusters are used to move the ROV in the other

directions.

8

Each thruster consists of waterproofing, propellers, bearing, and of course the motor.

Motors:

The biggest motor power is about (10 watts) to rotate the

vertical propeller with high torque.

The other four DC motors are about (6 watts) for moving the

ROV with smooth and easy steps.

All the propellers are made of plastic and have four blades each of

diameter (10cm), with (20mm) pitch and the motor torque gives it

high efficiency.

3.2.4 Waterproofing:

We cut the dimensions of PVC pipe accurately, and used a strong glue

to hold the parts together and then waterproofed it by silicon to

prevent any water leakage to the PVC. These steps were made to

waterproof the motors and the cameras.

3-3 Electrical System

3.3.1 Data Transmission (Appendix 1)

In case of data transmission; we tried to find a way to transmit data for large

distance with minimum amount of losses, at first we tried the normal UART system

for serial RS232 system but it has too errors for distance above 20 meter so we tried

another technique, we used RS422 line which has many advantages over the normal

serial of RS232 like:

Physical Media Twisted Pair

Network Topology Point-to-point, Multi-dropped

One of the small DC

motors

The small

propellers

Motor waterproofing

Camera waterproofing

9

Maximum Devices 10 (1 driver & 10 receivers)

Maximum Distance 1200 meters (4000 ft)

Mode of Operation Differential

Maximum Baud Rate 100 Kbit/s - 10 Mbit/s

But before using RS422; at first we used RS485 , but we faced many

problems as it’s half duplex serial connection and that of course what made us think

about full duplex , one which led us finally to choose RS422.

3.3.2 Cameras

We used two IP cameras to be easily interfaced to the computer ; one in the

bottom and one in the front side of the ROV ,the camera has IR technology which

gives it a good visibility in dark places.

As for IP camera we used CAT5 cable to connect it to the control room easily.

The IP camera

3.3.3 Power (Appendix 2)

We used liner regulators to step down from dc to dc voltage.

Problem faced us during that was that motors operates at high power ratting ( high

current ) ,the regulators didn’t afford so; we modified them by adding tip 2955 (

transistors ) with bigger ampere rang to work as a current buffer , also we added

several stages in parallel to minimize power loss in form off heat .

10

3-4 Arm Design:

All the arm materials except the motors were all donated, it’s made of a children

construction game, and we designed it with four degree of freedoms to facilitate our

missions.

It will be used to move the corals.

It’s controlled by a PC gamepad.

3-5 Two PC gamepads:

The two gamepads, the first is used to control the body of the ROV and the other

is used to control the arm.

3.5.1 Using the JAVA for utilizing the gamepad

(JXInput - Input Devices for Java)

As long as JXInput is used in a

way that it just uses common Java

features (see KeyboardDevice

/VirtualDevice), JXInput is a 100%

pure Java library, but for Java does

not support joysticks in a portable

fashion, the binding to physical

devices has to be done in a

platform dependent manner. So

system specific libraries come into

play and the 100% pure Java

beauty is gone. This also means

that applications using JXInput

then cannot be simple Applets.

JXInput allows interpreting

each key on the keyboard as interpreted by Swing to be a JXInput button. This gives

another source for about 100 additional buttons, for computer without a physical

joystick attached; JXInput offers the possibility to emulate 'virtual' joystick axes with

The arm without motors

11

help from a set of buttons. So it is very easy to use a 'virtual' joystick by using the e.g.

the cursor keys.

Performance: JXInput uses JNI (Java Native Interface) to access the native

library. JNI is known to be not too fast, so the number of calls has been minimized.

The polling of the devices state is managed by JXInput in a single JNI call.

Another possible performance drain is the allocation and reallocation of objects.

Therefore, after being setup, JXInput does no longer create any objects at all.

3.5.2The gamepad for the body of the ROV

This one controls each of the five DC motors individually, with the ability of

changing its current (amperes & direction), and that facilitate the control of the

speeds of the motors to control the speed of the ROV and the torque of turning.

3.5.3The gamepad for the arm of

This one used in controlling the five stepper motors individually, with the

ability of changing angles and current direction.

The gamepad used to control the ROV

The gamepad used to control the arm

12

3-4 Budget / Expense Sheet

Items Quantity Source Item Cost

Total Costs

Donated/Re-used or New

gears 3 International company

5 15.00 New

Game pad turbo 1 Unlimited office 40 40.00 New 4n25 1 Ram 3 3.00 New 74hc151 1 Ram 3 3.00 New Camera 2 logic 385 770.00 New usb to 422 2 Ram 47.50 95.00 New Max 488 8 Ram 0.25 2.00 New Pot(1k,5k,10k) 2 Ram 6 12.00 New Rpc.2.power.ros2p 4 Ram 5 20.00 New Voltage regulator7805

5 Ram 1.50 7.50 New

Cappf.104 40 Ram 0.25 10.00 New Tip2955 20 Ram 4 80.00 New Lm317t 20 Ram 2 40.00 New Ph9.1*40 round trip 3 Ram 5 15.00 New Propellers 5 Elsafa and

Elmarwa For Heating And Cooling (Cairo)

5 25 New

Small DC Motors 4 El-Alamia Center For Maintaining Printers (Cairo)

25 100 Re-used

Large DC Motor 1 El-Alamia Center For Maintaining Printers

30 30 Re-used

Small Stepper Motors

4 El-Alamia Center For Maintaining Printers

20 80 Re-used

Large Stepper Motor

1 El-Alamia Center For Maintaining Printers

50 50 Re-used

PVC ¾” pipes 5 PVC Center 4.20 21 New PVC 90-Degree Joints

8 PVC Center 1.5 12 New

PVC T-Joints 18 PVC Center 2 36 New Safety Parts For Small Thrusters

4 PVC Center 8.25 33 New

Safety Parts For Large Thruster

------- ------- Donated

13

Isolation various ------- 40 New Arm Parts various ------- ------- Donated Large Pump 1 Unknown 65 65 New Small Pump 1 Unknown 30 30 New Net 1 Unknown 5 5 Re-used Total costs 1639.5 EGP Costs are in EGP.

4-Challengs&Solutions:

Challenge 1 (data transmission)

At first many errors appeared while using RS232. Then errors appeared while

using RS485 as when we transmit data it received in error as its half-duplex and

needed more programming in the (PIC) to deal with such kind of transmission.

The data transmission between (PIC) and (COMPUTER) using RS422 wasn’t

easy as it’s never posted in the internet before, and as RS422 is considered new

transmission technique that there is little information about it.

Challenge 2 (cameras)

Here we faced a problem that the camera wasn’t water proofed so, we had to

use a technique that has been learned from the last workshop of ROV by cutting a

PVC, put the camera in it, and finally close both terminals by glass and another PVC.

Challenge 3 (thruster control)

We had faced some challenges in the control, but the biggest one was to decide

which method to use to control the ROV! It’s a matter of compensation between the

ease of control and the ease of the electronics design.

The problem is, in the Direction control method if the ROV went to a wrong

direction due to the water resistance and the shape of the ROV or due to the

difference in the strength of the thrusters, we can’t correct its position. So we

thought of using an Accelerometer.

And of course due to time and financial issues, we decided to start with the Individual

motor control method at this stage, and use the other method in the next developing

stage for our ROV.

14

Another challenge was the features of the available micro-controllers in the

market; we have 5 thrusters in ROV, so we need a micro-controller that has (5 PWM)

modules which is not available in the common micro-controllers.

A solution was to use more than one micro-controller which will make a

problem while developing the ROV later and a problem to send the data to more than

one micro-controller simultaneously, So we thought of another solution which was :

Generating discrete levels of PWM using Logic gates.

Multiplexing these levels to each motor.

Connecting the control inputs of the multiplexer to the micro-controller

By this way we can control the speed of all the thrusters by using one micro-

controller.

The last challenge was that we found that the efficiency of our thrusters was

decreased when we run it in the reverse direction, and we have to change the control

circuits to be in one direction only.

Challenge 4 (frame design)

The resistance against the ROV while moving was too large.

We didn’t find a cross or edged joints in our city.

The front weight on the ROV was too high due to presence of the arm.

So:

We used a small a cross sectional area, and a streamlined item.

We put a big air bag on the side of high weighted items on the ROV.

Challenge 5 (thrusters)

The motors of the thrusters weren’t waterproofed.

We didn’t find a 3-bladed propeller.

Bearing was so expensive.

So:

We decided to waterproof it by PVC pipes.

After calculation, we bought a 4-bladed propeller that gave approximately the

required torque.

We used a used-bearing from a blender.

15

Challenge 6 (direction)

The challenges in the directions were while using the five thrusters to move

the ROV in all axes (positive & negative), but the controllers would be so hard and

difficult.

So;

We controlled each motor of the five thrusters alone instead, that made it easier in

controlling but less efficient than using the five thrusters together.

5- Troubleshooting:

Definition: Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving. It is the systematic search

for the source of a problem so that it can be solved.

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination - eliminating potential causes of a

problem.

Problem

What went wrong?

1-While running the thrusters in air it went hot.

2-The transistors got too hot in air.

6- Future improvement

Power supply

Changing linear mode power supply to switching mode power supply using

MOSFETs, We already started it but the only hindrance we are facing is controlling

the circuit to drive the gate of the MOSFET.

Data transmission

Using optical fiber instead of RS422 which will enable us to extent the distance

in single mode to 1,050 meter with very high rates.

16

Cameras

Using high resolution camera with higher efficiency and upload the video on

the same optical fiber used for data transmission.

Thruster’s control

We will switch to the direction control, instead of motor control and use an

accelerometer as a feedback element.

Robotic arm

It will be improved by increasing the degree of freedoms, controlled by an

identical arm at the shore side to get better accuracy.

7-Reflections / Experience

Teamwork is the best way to get the job done, Keep it simple, never give up

and keep trying.

The team members are from different departments, each department learned

from the other some information, and one of the most important things is how

to turn what is written on papers into working things.

8-Lessons Learned

Team work improvement skills. (1.5 amp. Linear regulator ) can hold much more current using a transistor in

a special connection, where the regulator itself doesn’t carry any current ,it

only adjust the output voltage while the transistor carry all the load current.

9-references

http://www.homebuiltrovs.com/

http://www.materover.org/

http://www.marinetech.org/

http://wikipedia.org/

The Art of electronics, by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill.

17

10- Acknowledgments

Dr/Ahmed Magdy

Supervisor, mentor and the most supportive person.

Mr./Mohamed Ramadan

The expert technician, he had changed our written papers to real materials.

Eng/Mohamed Yousef

Technical support and help us using labs.

Dr/ Yasser Hawwas , Eng/Eiad & Eng/Basem

They helped the power supply group for getting information.

Dr/Tamer Ismail

Who helped us in making the view of the report.

Suez Canal University

Sponsorship, It had provided us with a place to work in it.

18

11-Appendices

Appendix 1

Data transmission schematic

As shown; we first use USB to RS485/422 converter then to the cable we used

CAT5E cable, and we received the signal using Maxim 488E transceiver, This

transceiver converts the serial signal into a RS-422 twisted pair signal, which is

connected to the tether, The transceiver is a full duplex chip meaning that it

transmits and receives simultaneously.

19

Appendix 2

Power schematic

R1

240

C10.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U1LM317K

R4240

R12

240

C70.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U4LM317K

R5240

R6

240

C90.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U5LM317K

R7240

R11

240

C130.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U7LM317K

R10240

R24700

Q2TIP2955

Q1TIP2955

R34700

R134700

R154700

Q3TIP2955

Q5TIP2955

R18

240

C180.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U15LM317K

R19240

R40

240

C150.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U14LM317K

R17240

R204700

R164700

Q15TIP2955

Q14TIP2955

R24

240

C220.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U17LM317K

R26240

R21

240

C200.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U16LM317K

R23240

R254700

R224700

Q17TIP2955

Q16TIP2955

R30

240

C250.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U19LM317K

R31240

R27

240

C230.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U18LM317K

R29240

R324700

R284700

Q19TIP2955

Q18TIP2955

R36

240

C290.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U21LM317K

R38240

R33

240

C270.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U20LM317K

R35240

R374700

R344700

Q21TIP2955

Q20TIP2955

Motors Supply

R44

240

C420.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U41LM317K

R43240

R41

240

C410.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U40LM317K

R42240

Q41TIP2955

Q40TIP2955

Sensor Supply

R53

240

C530.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U51LM317K

R55240

R50

240

C500.1uF

VI3

VO2

AD

J1

U50LM317K

R51240

Q51TIP2955

Q50TIP2955

VI1

VO3

GN

D2

U27805

VI1

VO3

GN

D2

U37805

Microcontroller Supply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

su

pply

R82000

R92000

R142000

R392000

R45

51

R46

51

R47

51

R48

51

1

2

J1

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J2

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J3

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J4

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J5

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J6

TBLOCK-M2

1

2

J7

TBLOCK-M2

1 2

J8TBLOCK-M2

20

Appendix 3

Thrusters control schematic

21

12-photo gallery