Expand With Your Own Hardware
Adding free-flood sections
The free-flood nose cone provides space for sensors that need direct contact with water. This is also where DVLs and altimeters are typically installed. If your vehicle does not include these, this space can be used for custom wet sensors.
If more wet payload space is needed, the vehicle can be extended with wet bottle(s)—a free-flooding module. A water-tight bulkhead type coupling attaches the bottle to the base vehicle. Each bottle typically matches the 4 inch diameter of the pressure hull, and the vehicle can accommodate up to three additional bottles, which can be configured as pressure-tight or free-flood.
Transducers can be installed on the side of the pressure hull or on the bottom ballast rail.
Adding pressure-tight sections
The vehicle can be extended with additional pressure-tight payload bottles up to three additional bottles. Two types of coupling interfaces are available for vehicle extension:
- Open hull extension: there are no water-tight bulkheads in-between each bottle. I.e., internally, the entire vehicle acts as a single pressure hull.
- Closed hull extension: there is a water-tight bulkhead in-between each bottle. A standard connector delivering raw battery power and Ethernet is provided to each module. The vehicle is compartmentalized to several pressure hulls.