THEY BEAT ME TO IT

Secretly, for the past few years, my factory has been working on something behind the scenes. Ultra rugged tracked wheelchairs built for exploring the outdoors. That's cool. And we didn't just make this big boy that can tow a truck across the parking lot. We also made a smaller tracked platform that you can travel with. The tracked platform allows you to park a regular wheelchair on top of it. And my fingers are not cold. and conquer more terrains than you otherwise would be able to. These are prototypes obviously still in development, mostly because we lack the experience and the expertise to make them watertight. Since when you're out hunting or especially fishing, the outdoors isn't always dry. And I want someone using our chairs to be able to experience nature in its entirety, whether it's crossing a stream or parking in a stream to fly fish. It was Elellanar Roosevelt who said, "Learn from the mistakes of others since you can't live long enough to make them all yourself." And Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen farther, it's because I was standing on the shoulders of giants." So instead of guessing, checking, and testing for the next few years and delaying release, I decided we should learn from the best. In front of us today, we have a waterproof underwater tracked robot called the Beatbox Aquaense X. This guy spins up to 5 hours at a time, 3 m deep underwater, and he's going to teach us everything we need to know about waterproofing our tracked wheelchairs. For reference, smartphones are only rated for half as deep and only for 30 minutes at a time. You know, this is just a little corporate espionage between friends. They do say that nothing beats a beatbox. Now, full disclosure, I did ask permission, unlike some other companies we know. And Beatbox like the idea so much they said they would help pay for the next 20 wheelchairs that we build. So, if you need a wheelchair, even if it's just as a backup, use code beatbox to get $500 off. And thank you Beatbox for supporting my channel and the accessible community. Now, it's time to learn how the Aquaense X becomes watertight. And of course, if you need a pool cleaning robot, I will leave a link for this guy down in the description as well. Besides outer space, underwater is probably the most difficult terrain for which to build robots for, especially in saltwater or chlorine, where this guy is supposed to be spending most of its life. I'll pull out the filter bin. This is where the leaves and contaminants collect during its underwater cleaning operations. Then I'll remove about 12 screws along the bottom. The goal here is to see how the tank tracks operate. We'll see if the drive motors are sealed and find where all the electronics are hidden and of course discover how the massive internal battery stays watertight under 3 m worth of water. These spinny boys up top are to help guide leaves and trash into that filter bin as the robot floats along the surface of the pool. But not only can it float, its 11 internal motors allow it to swim, drive up vertical walls, and of course vacuum the bottom of a pool with 6,800 gall per hour of filtered flow. That's about 170 bathtubs worth of water flowing through this cleaner every hour. And look at this. Inside the tank tracks is a blue propeller. These are what allow the Beatbot Aquaense X to fly around underwater. The drone-like propeller is nestled down inside of a smooth plastic tunnel so that the water flow stays laminer as it's propelled through the tracks, minimizing prop wash. Thumbs up for that. The tracks themselves are made from rubber with geared teeth on the underside that get propelled by the drive wheels. And what's interesting is that Beatbot has designed the drive wheels so that a single motor on the inside can turn the tracks and the scrubbing brushes found underneath the robot all at the same time. Multitasking. I need to remove all of these gears on both sides of the robot so we can get access to the brains in the center. And I'm noticing that every single piece of hardware we've seen so far is either made from plastic or stainless steel with plastic over molded on top. And it's good to know saltwater is brutally harsh and only a few materials can survive prolonged contact with it. And if our off-road wheelchairs are going to visit the ocean, these are good things to know and good things to plan for. The front brushes have the same wraparound style rubber scrubber that we saw earlier. Super easy to replace. With the left side track guard popped off, we can see another blue propeller in this half of the robot. You might have noticed that there's no corded data connection tether like we've seen on some of our underwater drones. The Aqua Sense X can be remote controlled wirelessly on the surface of the water, but as soon as it dives, it's all on its own since Bluetooth and Wi-Fi can't travel more than just a few inches under the surface. But thanks to its 29 different sensors, including infrared and ultrasonic, plus the 1,500 lm headlights, and the AI camera on the front, it can detect 40 different objects and clean up the pool all by itself without any contact from the outside world. It even detects stuff like bugs, lizards, frogs, and leaves. The underwater headlights and front AI camera are inside their own standalone sealed housing with 12 screws holding in the front glass. We can pop that out, and we find a thick rubber ring. I'll remove four more screws. And it's cool to see that the 1500 lm LEDs have their own thermal paste, which keeps them cool. But the AI hardware that controls cleanup must be sealed up somewhere else. Like over here on the side, we find another sealed up enclosure. And this is where most of the 29 sensors, like these ultrasonic sensors, join together to plug into a daughterboard. And these 12 silver screws with another thick rubber ring help keep all the water out. I'm sensing a theme here. But this isn't all of the brains. With the tracks completely off, we can now see two large buoyancy tanks inside, as well as styrofoam. I imagine the styrofoam is what helps keep the whole robot positively buoyant to where it can float on the surface of the pool after it's done cleaning. These tanks can fill up with water, allowing the robot to be heavier so it can dive down to the bottom of the pool or hover somewhere in the middle so it can drive up to platforms or clean underwater staircases. Obviously, my off-road wheelchairs won't need this level of complexity, but it's still pretty cool to see how it all works from the inside. Styrofoam, specifically the expanded polystyrene, is also what is used in boats and canoes and even jet skis to help keep them buoyant as well. With the tracks off and the foam out, it's getting a little chaotic here on my desk, but I think we're about to enter into the final compartment. Right above the two metal charging contact pads on the bottom are 40 screws. The charging pads allow the Beatbot Aquaense X to charge on its self-cleaning base station at 88 watts. It can get a full charge in about 4 and 1/2 hours. The screws that are placed every few centimeters are what's keeping the internal compartment dry. Once the screws are removed, I can pull away the two halves, revealing the secret. To stay dry at 3 m deep for hours at a time, Beatbot is using a large rubber gasket coated in a slimy dialectric grease. We saw something similar inside our underwater camera drones as well as in some of the ultra rugged smartphones. And this is surprising. We see two desicant packs. These packs are usually filled with a silica gel that can absorb up to 40% of their weight and moisture. And I imagine these are just in there to make sure the air that got sealed up inside of the battery box during manufacturing stays totally dry. Before we take a look at the motherboard, now that the watertight enclosure is open, we have access to the main pump motor. This is the one we see spitting water out of the back while the robot is swimming around in the pool. This acts as a vacuum pulling in 6,800 gallons of water per hour. And since half of the motor is inside of the electronics box, it is super important that the seal holding the motor be legit. And look at that. Behind the big brass nut, we see two more rubber O-rings. These are sandwiched into the frame with a dab of dialectric grease on each one. And it's good to know that such a simple, elegant solution is able to hold back the turbulent forces on the other side of the wall. With the right motors and the right seals, our own off-road tracked wheelchairs will be impermeable. Beatbot gives this thing an unprecedented three-year manufacturer's warranty. And now that we are inside, it's easy to see why they are so confident. They've gone the extra mile when it comes to protection. I'll remove the six screws around the black motherboard and uncip all of the sensor cables. The board itself is not potted or encapsulated, which is fine. The rubber gasket is more than strong enough to withstand 3 m worth of water. The drones we've taken apart before use the same style of waterproofing, and those are rated for 100 m. Beatbot is right to be confident in their warranty. The wires going into the box use a rubber filled liquid tight conduit connector. Good to know. And the two motors that go out to the tracks are also sealed up inside of the box with two brass nuts. One nut would get the job done, of course, but having two nuts is good for redundancy. The extra jam nut on top gives roughly 10 times more clamping force than just a single nut all by itself. With the motor route, we can see it's a standard motor at the bottom with a planetary gear set on top to give it more torque. I thought this might be the case since we did the same thing with our tracked wheelchair. We custom machined our own gear boxes so that we could get more torque from off-the-shelf motors. The BBOT needs more torque because it's operating 3 meters underwater where there's about 1,000 pounds worth of extra weight on the robot body as it's motoring around the bottom of the pool. And that's where the extra gears and torque come in handy. Plus, you can see here on the back side of the drive motors, Beatbot has waterproof the boards themselves with board level conformal coating. The conformal coating is a rubbery thin film designed to keep liquid away from sensitive circuits. Smartphones would basically be invincible if they started doing this. and I hope Apple is watching. Once the Beatbot Aquaense X finishes its pool cleanup, you can just set it back on its charging base. This is a station where it will automatically clean itself, automatically emptying the debris bin and giving itself a shower, a reverse flush of its vacuum system. This is also good for longevity since it helps get rid of some of the salt water and chlorine. The self-cleing storage bin can go for an impressive 2 months without being emptied. It's really nice that we can take advantage of everything Beatbot has learned over the past few years, and I appreciate the transparency. It takes a lot of guts to open up and reveal your guts. With the two additional pump motors removed, and that second drive motor with its two brass nuts taken out, the last thing to come out of our Aquaense X underwater pool cleaning robot is the battery pack. It looks like it's also completely sealed up tight in its own enclosure, double wrapped. Extra protection is always a good thing. And its 266Whour capacity allows it to clean the pool's surface for up to 10 hours at a time. And there we have it. Years worth of knowledge and expertise gained in mere minutes. And of course, if you need a self-cleaning pool cleaner robot for your own pool, I'll leave a link down in the description. And now I just got to spend the next decade figuring out how to put this all back together again. Wish me luck and thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.