I participated in Project Orca during the summer of 1999. I was feeling restless and spent some time in the machine shops. The guy working next to me was working on the chassis of this autonomous underwater vehicle. We got to talking about the different problems we were trying to solve. Soon I was using my Pro/Engineer and waterjet machining skills to build him a custom electronics mounting chassis to fit in the PVC hull of the vehicle.
The custom chassis allowed all the electronics to be removed from the hull, and rapidly re-installed. It would slide into the hull and mate with a series of connectors. This allowed the team to go quickly from making/troubleshooting the electronics to testing them in the vehicle. In addition the chassis was made with a set of modular "mounting plates" That could be mounted anywhere along the chassis. These cards were designed to accept standard PC104 sized components. Before I knew it I was spending my summer evening working on the project getting ready to go to Panama City FL for the national event. It was a blast
The photo below is one of the vehicles built by Project Orca. Visit the Project Orca web site to see many more