During my freshman year on Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (CUAUV), I designed a set of interchangeable battery pods for our two vehicles, Artemis and Apollo. During our designs for the vehicles we sought to increase the number of interchangeable parts (from mechanical and electrical perspectives) so that more design hours could provide more for both vehicles as well as giving us greater flexibility during bug fixing and testing. Ultimately we decided upon 8 identical, hot-swappable pods so that each sub could be operating with 2 while another full set was charging to allow for constant testing during the summer before competition.
During the fall semester I worked through the design of the pods while also learning CUAUV’s design practices, how sealing enclosures works, and how to use the different machine shop equipment available to us. The final design involved three major components: a sealed hull, removable endcap, and frame which batteries were strapped to. All parts were interchangeable between different pods, and functionally each was identical to the others (besides some which were harder to open than others).
During the spring semester we worked long hours to manufacture the seemingly endless number of parts required for all 8 pods, but ultimately completed them. Once completed and integrated, the pods powered months of testing for Artemis and Apollo leading up to our victory at the 20th Annual International RoboSub Competition that August. The pods continued to be used for the following two years’ vehicles, Castor & Pollux then Odysseus & Ajax.