Adjustable Buoyancy – Old System

Pros

Our old design is minimal and compact, allowing it to be easily 3D-printed and assembled quickly. This design allows high adjustability as well: we can add as many buoyancy blocks as we want atop the mount. Moreover, we could easily mount this design on many parts of our robot because it simply wraps around the frame.

Cons

Securing and removing buoyancy blocks from the system proved to be very troublesome. Adding new buoyancy blocks required several zip ties, which would become increasingly harder to secure as the stack grew larger. Likewise, removing a buoyancy block may mean completely rearranging the remaining blocks if the zip ties were used to secure multiple blocks. 

Most importantly, the zip ties were often not very secure, leading to buoyancy blocks that would shift and float around during pool tests, resulting in unwanted buoyancy changes as the robot moved around.