Building underwater robots, aquarium cleaner

Let's Make Robots Beginners
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Hey, new here. Sorry for everything wrong in advance.

My goal is to build a underwater tracked robot.
Starting out more simply a small underwater dozer.
I have quite large aquariums and I’m trying to build something to move sand and clean the lower glass(to come later) I have a 3d printer and a mini CNC machine. But would like to stay all plastic. So I’ll be using printed tracks/blade and body.

I used to work with things years ago with if then programing and com-ports so I’m trying to find some suggestions on underwater servos or motors. It’ll be hardwired to a controller so RC isn’t a concern. Not sure what servos or arduino? Type controller I should be looking into?

If this goes well I plan on making something much bigger with arm to help me work in the crawl space under my house. Just don’t have the mobility I used too.

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Hi there,

Welcome to the forum.

A good place to start: https://community.robotshop.com/tutorials/show/how-to-make-a-robot-lesson-1-getting-started

:wink:

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Hello @Brokebeardedguy and welcome to the forum!

That sounds like a cool project!

A nice place to look for UUV parts is this:
https://www.robotshop.com/en/bluerobotics.html

You can find some waterproof servos here, but you could also use regular servos as long as you use a waterproof casing.

I also suggest doing a lot of research because creating an underwater robot is not an easy task, you can search for papers:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224362592_Design_of_a_low_cost_underwater_robotic_research_platform

or open source project like this one:

Good luck!

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I think the underwater equipment it’s beyond my thought process. Was to build something small with tracks and a pusher to move around substrate and stuff on the bottom of the tank. Something that I could just simply sink.
Using continuous rotation servo motors to drive the treads and then a 90-degree servo to adjust the angle of the pusher. I do appreciate the link to the blue robotics stuff but thousands of dollars for something I’m essentially accomplishing with a broom handle in the squeegee is outside of the wall Park my goal was to try to design something for under or around $100. Being that I’ll be designing and printing or machining everything but the motors/controller. My search continues and I will make posts as I find and develop things.

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Oh, I see. Well, I haven’t seen many underwater tracked robots so it would be cool if you could share your findings, perhaps you could post it in the Robots section.

I know it is not exactly what you have in mind but I thought you could get some ideas of some of the robots the members of the community have shared:



Good luck with your project!

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I know this might be a dead thread been a busy year. Does anyone have insight on how long a continuous rotation servo may or may not last getting wet? If it would be submerged for maybe 20 minutes and then left out to dry? I might just be my own guinea pig and order some and find out a full waterproof servo is not in the budget for a small build like this

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Hello @Brokebeardedguy!

You could try something like this


https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2722492-Waterproofing-Servos

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do apricate the information. ill hopefully be posting some pictures as the build goes on… I’m excited to start

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Awesome!

Good luck :smiley: