We are very excited to announce the release of the BlueROV Developer Version! The BlueROV is an ROV kit for experienced hobbyists, DIYers, and those wishing to learn!
It comes as an unassembled kit with frame, watertight enclosure, thrusters, and speed controllers. The electronics are up to you – open source software is available. It uses six thrusters to provide six-degree-of-freedom control allowing you to point the ROV in any orientation to film anything, grab anything with a simple robot arm, and have a lot of fun! Note, this kit is identical to those received as Kickstarter rewards.
This is not a ready-to-run kit! It is meant for those with software/electronics experience who are interested in following along with and/or contributing to ROV software development.
The BlueROV Developer Version is available for pre-order now, shipping by August 2015.
Software: bluerov-ros-pkg
We are also proud to introduce the bluerov-ros-pkg, a software platform for ROV and AUV control built on the Robotic Operating System (ROS). By leveraging ROS, we have access to a vast amount of existing work in robotics, from localization and mapping to autonomous navigation.
We made a short video to introduce the bluerov-ros-pkg and demonstrate basic control of the BlueROV. You can check it out here: