Remotely Operated Vehicle - Aquaphoton Team

About The Competition

    The MATE Center uses underwater robots – also known as remotely operated vehicles or ROVs – to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and prepare students for technical careers. The competition 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.

About The Team

We are a technical team from Alexandria University, Egypt called Aquaphoton.

AquaPhoton Academy's undergraduate team has been taking part in the annual MATE competition since 2012. In 2014, the team ranked 1st in Egypt’s Regional Competition and 6th in the International MATE ROV competition which was held in Michigan, USA.

Below are simulated and  real life pictures of our  last year’s ROV:

    As per the competition rules, we are required to power our ROV with 48 volts and 30 amps and in order to power the electrical components that have lower voltage ratings, we use commercial buck converters as they are more compact in size than converters designed by the team. This year, due to the size restriction imposed on the ROVs, the size of the canister housing our electrical boards and other electrical components has decreased, which prompted us to shift from THT design towards SMD PCB design.

    Last year, the electrical canister contained 4 PCBs which were placed into vertical split arrangement as shown below:

    As for this year,we already have an initial design ready but we are waiting for the competition manual release to finalize the design. All of the electrical components will be placed on two boards. The first is a rectangular-shaped board that will be placed horizontally and the other one is a semi-circle which will be placed vertically.

    Finally, we would like to thank PCBway for giving students the opportunity to bring their projects to life. Aquaphoton would be grateful for your sponsorship and will acknowledge your support in our presentation as well as include it in our technical report and poster.