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What started as a crazy idea over lunch between friends, has turned into the world’s most affordable high performance ROV and marine robotics component company. We spoke to Rustom Jehangir (better known as Rusty), CEO of Blue Robotics, to hear more about their story.

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Rusty’s background in mechanical engineering and an avid interest in engineering and robotics, specifically airborne drones, led him to his first job at an aerospace company specializing in quadcopter drones.

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In late 2013, Rusty and a friend met for lunch and came up with the wild idea of turning one of their surfboards into a solar-powered robot to send across the ocean from Los Angeles to Hawaii. It had never been done before and they wanted to take on the challenge to see if it was possible.

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This was the first step in the creation of Blue Robotics.

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It looked like it was going to be a fairly easy endeavor — solar panels from Ebay, an open-source Arduino-based autopilot, a GPS unit, and a satellite radio to communicate with it. However, when it came to finding a thruster to propel the robot, they quickly realized there was nothing suitable available off-the-shelf.

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There were some options for remotely operated underwater vehicles, but with thrusters costing around $1,000 a piece and requiring frequent maintenance, they were hardly ideal. Countless internet searches yielded no results, but led the two friends to discover that there was a real need for something like this in the industry. There was a wide variety of people looking for a reliable, affordable thruster- hobbyists building underwater robots, students, and companies.

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With a garage full of tools, the idea of the surfboard morphed into that of starting a company dedicated to making underwater thruster motors. After building multiple prototypes, they came up with a design that was cheaper, smaller and easier to make than anything on the market! A successful 2014 Kickstarter campaign gained traction and they sold 600 thrusters to 300 people from all over the world.

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The Blue Robotics team had never used a professional pcb assembly service before; the CircuitHub platform promised to make things easy. Compared to traditional PCB assemblers, where sharing information and design files requires extensive back and forth and is error-prone, CircuitHub provides a quote within minutes of uploading your design files.

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Their Kickstarter campaign uncovered further gaps in the marine robotics industry and Blue Robotics came in to fill them. The company began selling underwater enclosures, depth sensors and lights, tether cables, communication electronics and cameras. In 2016 they sold their first remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). Their goal was and continues to be to supply the industry with accessible, high quality components and systems that enable people to better understand and care for our oceans.

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Blue Robotics has close to 30 different PCB assemblies in their product line, all assembled by CircuitHub. CircuitHub also acts as a design tool. It allows them to upload their project and get a visual snapshot of it. They can quickly modify and tweak it, before settling on a finished product.

“CircuitHub’s quality, schedule, and service has been impeccable from day one and they are one of our most important partners now. They make PCB assembly fast, easy and reliable. I have no complaints!”

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Today Blue Robotics has over 200 products, thousands of customers around the world, and have been part of some truly incredible projects. To read more about Blue Robotics and the projects they are a part of, head over to their blog, but these are a few of our picks:

• How Low Cost Subsea Components are Changing Marine Conservation Efforts
• ROV Sensor Integration for Oil Spill Research
• ROV Arctic Exploration
• Scaling our Understanding of the Oceans with Affordable Marine Robotics

This is a company continuously innovating and striving to make a difference in the world we live in. Ocean exploration is relevant to all of us, and should remain a focus particularly around issues of conservation and protection.

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