BlueROV Internal Payload Volume, Questions for the Community

General Discussion
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1

Hi Everyone,

The engineering team I used to run had a BlueROV2, and I’ve seen or worked with a bunch of other organisations who all used a BlueROV2 and one of the most common things that I’ve seen people do is to add additional waterproof enclosures underneath in order to gain internal payload volume, usually for electronics.

I’m exploring some ideas to solve this by increasing the available internal payload volume in the main BlueROV2 tube by condensing the wiring and electronics. But before I commit a bunch of time and effort to this I wanted to understand how common the problem actually is, or if I just have a skewed perspective.

For those of you running custom payloads or companion systems:

  • Have you ever run out of internal space?
  • What payloads were you trying to integrate?
  • What was the limiting factor (volume, wiring, power, cooling, buoyancy, something else)?
  • How did you solve it?
  • If you could free up a significant amount of internal space without changing the external vehicle dimensions, how valuable would that be to you?

I’m particularly interested in research, inspection and custom autonomy applications rather than stock vehicle configurations.

Assuming there is interest then I’d look to make this available as a 3rd part retro-fit kit/product.

Thanks,

Andrew

2

Hi @AndrewMI -

That sounds like a cool idea, and I’ll be interested in the feedback you receive. In general, the Blue Robotics R&D team is working on an update to the standard ROV electronics that will use RAILS, and a completely new ESC design. This combined with some other improvements will drastically simplify the wiring and increase the amount of free space! As always, it’s tough to provide any timeline on when this all may be ready and launched, but just sharing that it is in active development!

3

Thanks Tony, that is really helpful to know. Any idea how much free space that is likely to leave?

4

I went down a similar path but for an AUV. One thing to consider when optimizing for space is to consider mass as well. if you put too much in there, you’ll need to add positive buoyancy elsewhere.

5

Yes for sure, I know that pain very well. What I’ve got in mind should be a weight saving upgrade as well as volume saving upgrade, obviously what you then use the new-found volume for is a different matter.