pic: 1726 NURC ROV

[MrForbes]

A couple pieces of styrofoam taped on to the robot is a bit too cost effective, eh?

go to the h2orobots.org page, lots of interesting ideas about how to build underwater robots on the cheap or with lots of funding

[tseres]

i've been on that site all morning btw, it the webcast on tonight too?

[MrForbes]

No, the competition is over, but the hosts said they would put all the video from the webcast up....

[Smaug]

it wouldn't be practical to fill it with helium because it would stay at the top and you want ti to be naturally buoyant so it is easy to maneuver.

[MrForbes]

Did you notice the ballast? two steel J bolts, one along each side, at the bottom.

also I think that you really won't gain much by playing with different gasses or a vacuum rather than air, the relative weight of water to any gas or a vacuum is very high, compared to the difference in weight between air, helium, or a vacuum

[falconmaster]

Super congrats to 1726 The NERDS for winning the overall competition. They are the National ROV Champions of the NURC competition. They beat three University teams and one college team for the title, and they did it with the "ROV-In-A-Box" kit you can get from Inventivity. It was created by Carl Hayden H.S. team 842 and one of the mentors, Karen Suhm of Inventivity to allow team to get into the ROV world as painless as possible. The kit is available through the www.h2orobots.org website. Congrats again to Buena H.S. National ROV Champs!