Students Q&A with Underwater Drone Experts
Last week we had the pleasure of hosting our local town Ayr Public School’s grade 5/6 class at our shop to teach students about Deep Trekker ROVs and what it’s like working in the field that we do. Eager to take every opportunity to engage in our community, we were thrilled when the school reached out to us asking for an afternoon lesson to enhance their social studies and global business curriculum. We started off the afternoon with a presentation about Deep Trekker ROVs, marketing, tradeshows, and travel. Everyone from the Deep Trekker team that was involved with the presentation were very impressed with the interest and amount of questions we received from the students.
Here are just a few of the many amazing questions we were asked.
“Does the depth rating come from the length of the tether or the pressure that the ROV can handle?”
Our depth ratings are based on pressure and not tether length. The ratings were initially calculated based on field testing and trials to include an appropriate margin of safety. Every single ROV to leave the shop is pressure tested.
“Why did you organize your products into packages?”
When we initially started out just selling the DTG2, we gave every customer the option of building their own packages. After some time it became clear that separating them into four packages (the Starter, Pro, Smart, and Worker) was an easier way to showcase the different aspects of our products and ensure that a customer is receiving all of the components that they need to perform a certain job. However, we still offer a number of additional accessories that can be added to customize the packages.“What are some of the import challenges you face when selling your products abroad?”
We have sold to over 70 countries worldwide, to a number of nations with different import regulations. In North America we are covered under NAFTA so exporting to the United States is generally not a challenge. As for the rest of the world, we have resellers in various countries that help us ensure that our products are being imported properly, we check in with agents specialized in dealing with imports in other countries, and ensure that our products are labelled properly (including all relevant paper work) when we ship them abroad.
“How did a company from the little town of Ayr, Ontario become known around the world?”
A lot of travel, demo days, writing editorials, exhibiting at trade shows, hard work, and a TON of enthusiasm.
“How does the pitching system work?”
With a little clever engineering and the help of gravity, we rotate the ROV’s outer shell and thrusters while gravity holds down the internal semi-circle weighted frame, so our main thrusters can rotate a complete 180 degrees. This allows the ROV to drive straight up and down, side to side, forwards and backwards, all using the same thrusters.
After our presentation we set up our pipe crawler system and put a DTG2 ROV in our demo tank to let the students have a chance at operating our Deep Trekker products. Needless to say the students had a great time and were enthusiastic when sharing their wonder for Deep Trekker systems.
It was a pleasure having such inquisitive minds visit the shop and we can’t wait to see what they bring to the world as they grow… maybe some of them will even be part of the Deep Trekker team one day.
