Navsea's educational submarine, the Sea Perch, is currently a simple kit made up of PVC pipe, pool noodle, and a motor attached to a switch and battery. This switch actuates the motor in the submarine to make it descend or ascend in the water. However, this is all done purely through hardware with a physical switch, wire, and battery. The goal of this project was to use a Raspberry PI to control the motors in software. In addition use a transducer sensor built out of piezoelectric material to transmit and receive an acoustic signal through the water. This sensor was manufactured by the Mechanical Engineering team that was also part of the project. Such a sensor will allow the robot to be controlled wirelessly through the water instead of a tethered wire to land.

Our team collaborated with Mechanical Engineering 36 on this project.