Aquaphoton Academy Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)

Who Are We

Aquaphoton Academy’s undergraduate team began manufacturing submarines in

2012 and has been taking part in the annual MATE ROV International Competition

ever since.

The graduated students then decided to share their passion with aspiring engineers,

so they co-founded Aquaphoton Academy to encourage students to engage in the

field of submarines and ROV industry. By sharing their experience and knowledge, the

members of the Academy sought to create a healthy work environment that drives the

advancement of the undergraduates’ technical expertise and urges them to be entrepreneurs in ROV industry.

Since then, the team made many achievements in the field of automatic control of

remotely operated vehicles and was the best representative of Alexandria University

in local and international competitions.

About The Competition

The MATE competition in an annual event that requires students to think of themselves as “entrepreneurs” and transform their teams into companies that manufacture, market, and sell “products.” In addition to engineering their ROVs, the students are required to prepare technical reports, poster displays, and engineering presentations that are delivered to working professionals who serve as competition judges. Each year a different set of missions is required to be implemented by the participating teams.

Aquaphoton Academy Selected Achievements

- Best design for our electrical system in the regional MATE ROV 2018 competition.

- First place in Underwater Robotics Challenges (UWRC) Egypt 2020.

- First place in ROV Egypt 2013 local competition.

- First place in ROV Egypt 2014 local competition.

- Second place award for underwater missions in the regional MATE ROV 2019 competition.

- Third place in ROV Egypt 2019 regional competition in April 2019.

- Third place in ROV Egypt 2017 regional competition in April 2017.

- Third place in the robotics category at Alexandria's University Science Club competition.

Our Products

Aquaphoton Academy latest creation was "Magikarp" an innovative Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) designed to tackle the mission of exploring and excavating underwater archaeological sites.

Also Magikarp was a general-purpose ROV designed to meet MATE's 2020 ROV competition.

This year we are building a brand new ROV capable of performing extreme maneuvers with the help of a robust electrical system.

This year, 2021, our electrical system is composed of 7 main PCBs (+1 for research and development). We are aiming towards a modular design for better portability in the future. The ROV subsystems are as follows:

• Actuators board
• Control Station board
• Distribution board
• Controller board
• Feedback system board
• Vision system board
• Micro ROV board

The number of components this year exploded greatly due to different attempts at perfecting our design from last year. Thus, a high-quality SMD board was the best option for us.

Currently, we already have an initial design ready, and we are working on finalizing the design by 3D modelling our boards using Eagle and Fusion pipeline.

Product History

Word To PCBWay

PCBWay is our PCB manufacturer of choice. We have already ordered our electrical system PCBs from PCBWay for the last two years; this would be the third one. For the last couple of years we have been really pleased with the quality of your PCBs and would love to keep working with you. We will acknowledge your support in our presentation as well as include it in our technical report and poster. We ask you to sponsor our organization, so we can stay competitive. We would love to keep acknowledging PCBWay's support on our PCBs as always.