Have you ever imagined flying underwater like a dolphin
exploring the incredible world of the ocean? Imagine strapping into your own
little submarine like a fighterpilot straps into his fighterjet. Cruise along
behind unsuspecting fish, barrelroll over the sandbanks below, cut corners
around the corralreef, search for shipwrecks, all without getting wet or cold.
Lets face it, our planet is more blue than green and for ages we have only
skimmed the surface. Now Scubatron is making it a little easier to explore
our fantastic blue arena as well.
Scubatron Personal Underwater Crafts
Scubatron is a newly formed company established to create small personal submarines.
The one-seat submarine, called "PROTON", and the two-seat submarine,
"NEUTRON", are made as small as absolutely possible. Scubatron submarines
will be dry inside, not half full of water like most other small recreational
submarines. Flying these subs will not be like riding along in a Cadillac,
but rather like strapping into a tight cockpit of a race car. There
will be no room for stretching out while dressed with a Proton submarine.
The reasons for making the subs small are many. Let us list a few points:
Scubatron's main goal is to produce a recreational underwater craft giving the pilots the same range, endurance, and dive depth as scubadivers. One of the greatest features of these subs is their size. There are no other underwater crafts that can be handled by only two people. With the right setup and gear, these subs can actually be launched and retreived by the pilot alone. Scubatron still recommends having at least one set of helping hands nearby for practical reasons. These small submarines are not designed for deep diving or industrial work. That doesn't mean they cannot be used as such. The subs may be used for checking the underside of boats, conducting searches in a harbor, looking for shipwrecks, or any other mission the pilot feels like getting involved in. In the future, Scubatron may develope a 'work horse' version with greater endurance, deeper dive depth, and certain mods to make it more suitible for industrial/research applications.
The two motors are mounted in streamlined torpedo like pods attached on each side of the hull. For ease of transportation and launch/retreival the motor pods are easilly snapped on or off. For now each pod only houses the motor, batteries, and control electronics. As soon as our prototype boat has demonstrated our main concept, we will design various options into the motorpods. The motorpods will be able to carry various loads in the front, such as high power lights, cameras, extra batteries, extra airtanks, cargo rooms for small items, and even a remote controlled arm or hook for grabbing things you wish to bring up. Some of the options require extencive design and testing, and will probably not be available for some time.
A great bi-product born from this submarine design, is an underwater scooter for dragging lazy scuba divers around. The motor pods already house all the power and control electronics needed to get running. That means that by attaching handles to the torpedos we have underwater scooters. Scubatron has decided to develop this idea into a seperate product parallel with the submarines. As soon as we have extencively field tested the scooters, we will have more info on them.