On my meanders through Madrone Hall, there have been some pink cowboy hat wearing hooligans afoot, and I wanted to know why. After tracing them to the ROV room, I had my first lead.
The Linn-Benton ROV (remotely operated vehicle) team is a school club that builds underwater robots. Physics faculty Greg Mulder is the advisor, and helps out with team functions such as organization and ordering of supplies. He also schedules pool test days and gets the team to meet and make steady progress. They then compete in an annual competition held by the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) organization, competing with teams from around the globe. Last year, the LBCC team placed 10th in the competition, also winning a first-place award for technical presentation.
This year’s MATE competition is set for June 19-21 in Alpena, Michigan. The robot will complete underwater tasks in a timed environment for points, which will be judged based on predetermined performance metrics and the judges. The students use physics, math, electronics, and various engineering skills.
Not knowing any of this, I just started showing up. What I didn’t immediately expect to find was that they built robots. Specifically robots that go underwater, like “Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.” Not only that, but they complete tasks in competition.
As I started learning about the point of the ROV team it seemed relatively complicated. There were also no leads as to why they wore pink cowboy hats. So, still lacking understanding, I decided to join the team and find out what was really going on behind the scenes.
The key players seem to have a high level of dedication, and they put in a huge amount of time and effort to make things happen. There are also many members that put in a smaller, more manageable amount of work that helps the team along. It seemed like there was not any specific time obligation as long as someone wanted to learn and work on a project.
There were a few major projects and personal projects that intertwined to make the overall plan. Each person who shows up has a piece in mind they want to deal with, or tries to find one they want to work on. The thing I appreciated about it was that everyone seems as if they are just trying to learn, for the purity of learning.
When asked what their greatest struggle was in the competition, “staying motivated” was the response. Understandably, it is a large project, inherited by one group and partially completed by another. In the words of the team, “Sometimes you have a good skeleton, and sometimes you just get bones.”
Everyone seems to have a compassionate understanding of the work involved in making changes. I asked the team members what on the robot they most wanted to improve this year, and what would make the biggest impact. They responded that they were adding more thrusters, because in last year’s competition the thing that took the most time was positioning the robot while underwater.
Some of the systems involved include an analog camera, powered from the 48-volt supply, going through a 48-volt to 12-volt converter. They transfer data from cameras by ethernet back to the team for command and control.
There is also a humanoid robotic arm, being actuated with 16 servo motors and artificial tendons. Servo motors are electric motors that can be moved precisely to a specified position. Originating from the latin word servus, meaning slave, they accurately move to commanded positions. The arm is controlled via a glove with potentiometers to measure hand and finger movement similarly to human anatomy.
There is also a member working on high-efficiency, low-frequency radio communications, which if realized, will be routed through the compressed air line, as water will not conduct radio waves.
They are also working on a program to balance the thrust load of the robot so it stays level at whatever angle they specify for it, sort of like a drone that automatically hovers. This needs to be done with sensor data hover, not static amounts of thrust. Different parts of the robot can take on water; many of the 3D printed parts are hollow, so the buoyancy can change mid competition. This means to keep the robot level throughout its tasks, the amount each thruster needs to work will change, and that can be detected and accounted for in code.
Things that people work on as passion projects get integrated into the robot if applicable, and the design seems to stretch to encapsulate the group’s enthusiasm. The people working to make it to competition seem to see it as a labor of love more than a cold-cut competition.
Much thought goes into the changes that are made, and the work is manageable for new members; you only need to take on as much as you feel comfortable with. They are in pursuit of continuous improvement; you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to improve certain things from last time, and if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
I have never thought of submersible robotics as so downright reasonable. As a new member, if I have an idea, it is actually heard and I am told why it would or wouldn’t work, and everyone involved tries to help you get the resources you need to succeed in whatever project you want to take on.
I would highly recommend trying it out, business majors included – whoever would like to participate.
We are getting ahead of ourselves, though. We still never answered the question of the pink cowboy hats. After much questioning, and skullduggery, I found the truth we’ve all been searching for:
“If we don’t wear the hats, the robot won’t work.”
I was stunned. It was so obvious, how didn’t I see this before?
This article originally appeared in the April 2025 edition of The Commuter.
