Photo CC BY-NC-SA from http://openrov.com
This little beauty is the OpenROV. From the site:
OpenROV is a Do It Yourself telerobotics community centered around underwater exploration and education. We have developed a low-cost telerobotic submarine that can be built with mostly off-the-shelf parts. The goal of OpenROV is to democratize exploration by allowing anyone to explore and study underwater environments.
I spent a few minutes in conversation with the creators this afternoon after they spoke at Maker Faire. Since the start of the quadcopter project, I’ve been talking to Jason Pittman (Professor, Geosciences) about expanding our remote sensing capabilities, and bathymetry is part of that discussion. The OpenROV folks seemed very open to and interested in partnering with educational institutions, so I’m looking forward to checking out their platform and finding out how we might be able to work together.