Lessons from RoboSub 2019

• Hydrophones

  • Before putting in water, rub dish soap over them. This will keep bubbles off.

  • Air bubbles/pockets/vessels are the biggest problem and will cause distortion Hydrophones should be placed as far away from air as is feasible and minimizing material that might contain air pockets (such as 3D printed parts) near the hydrophones is critical

• Molykote 44 medium should be used to cover all of the holes on the female connector every time before inserting the connector.

• We should have had a prep checklist. - This should be mandatory for each time the sub is put into the water. In RoboSub19 we forgot to close one of the air tubes in the valve box so it flooded during a semifinal run.

• We should design a method to perform effective surveying. - Surveying consists of estimating the distances and angles between objects underwater. In RoboSub 2019 the 3rd place team, Arizona State University, was able to navigate between tasks because they used an exceptional surveying method and leveraged an optic gyroscopic system to precisely rotate the sub.