Actuators Overview

The vehicle's actuators consist of all thrusters and external devices such as marker droppers that are non-passive mechanical systems.

Thrusters Overview
The six vehicle thrusters allow the vehicle to be controlled in five degrees of freedom: heave (up and down), surge (forward and backward), sway (left and right strafe), yaw (heading), and pitch. The thrusters used are VideoRay and Seabotix thrusters.

Thruster control: in brief

The vehicle controller on the computer calculates the appropriate thrust value for each thruster based on vehicle dynamics, and passes this value to the microcontroller on the thruster management board. (Click here for more information on Nova's control). This board then output the appropriate voltage to each thruster directly. This is a change from previous years, when in-thruster motor controllers were used. This strategy is not used in Nova because of the difficulty in maintaining six separate boards at once.

VideoRay GTO thrusters:

Seabotix BTD150 thrusters:

These thrusters are used as vertical thrusters to control pitch and heave, and as strafing thrusters to control sway. The vertical thrusters are mounted to cross beams below the fore and aft vertical members. The fore strafing thruster is mounted in front of the fore vertical thruster, and the aft strafing thruster is mounted below the rear endcap. The optimal operating voltage is 19.1 V, and they receive a max voltage of 22.2 V.

Marker Dropper

Nova's marker dropper is mounted underneath the vehicle behind the DVL, in line with the downward camera. This means that when the camera is centered on a bin, the marker will also be centered. Darts with custom flights are used as markers, as they drop very straight. The marker dropper is actuated with two 24V continuous sealed solenoids, which can drop independently to maximize points at the competition.