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Thats super cool for the ROV aspect. In university I was part of the underwater robotics program, and optimizing the tether was a huge aspect. We used a fiberop
by flakes 3y ago
Thats super cool for the ROV aspect. In university I was part of the underwater robotics program, and optimizing the tether was a huge aspect. We used a fiberoptic line for communication, leaving the rest of the cable mostly dominated by the copper conductor for power.
Any weight reduction that can be made for the cable internals is actually two fold. The cable needs to remain neutrally buoyant as to not pull on the ROV and not restrict the pilot. Less internal weight in the cable means less foam/other material needs to be added to offset the negative buoyancy.
- anfractuosity 3y agoWould I be right in thinking a tether would be necessary with a ROV for a high bandwidth live video link as ultrasound seems only usable up to 100s of kHz. I guess the only high bandwidth alternative might be lasers?
- gene-h 3y agoReally bright LEDs can be used for underwater optical communication up to 100 m[0]. I'd really like to see someone make this tech into an FPV system for RC subs. [0]https://optics.org/news/11/9/36 https://optics.org/news/11/9/36
- anfractuosity 3y agoCool, that's very interesting! I also just found this using an array of ultrasound transducers https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2022/11/01/221101a.html https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2022/11/01/221101a.html for standard definition video.
- ethbr1 3y agoIt'd be kind of sketchy to have as a single point of failure in an underwater ROV that might not be able to emergency-surface straight up (e.g. wreck or overhang exploration). There's a ton of gnarly stuff that can happen underwater acoustically without obvious warning (salinity, temperature, topography, etc etc).
- sandworm101 3y ago>>LEDs can be used for underwater optical communication up to 100m Maybe in the clear open sea of the Caribbean. Not all water is perfectly clear at any wavelength. I give it something more like 100mm through turbid river outflow.
- flakes 3y agoWireless signals can drop off very quickly even in clear water. Add dirt, algae, turbulence, etc to that and it quickly drops off in about a meter for reasonable devices. For our bot we had about 3 1080p video streams being sent back over the wire, which requires a decent amount of bandwidth (we used a small fiberoptic ethernet switch on the surface and inside the enclosure). Apart from that, if your ROV is light, and the cable is durable enough, the cable can make for a good retrieval method when you brown out the bot haha.