The construction process for our ROVs involves the use of many different power tools. To reduce the risk of injury, all team members are required to complete safety training. This safety training includes:
• Safety briefing
• Hands-on training with tools
• Testing for knowledge of rules and procedures
An adult safety officer is always on duty when power tools are being used to ensure proper procedures are followed.
2025 GEARS team member score table
Safety Tests
To facilitate safe operation during the construction of our ROV, each member of our team was required to pass a safety test for all power tools used during construction, as well as a general safety test regarding safe conduct while within the work area.
The scores for the tests can be seen in the table below. A blue box represents both a passed test and completed hands-on training. The required tools represent those tools that are necessary to be certified on to participate in the team, the general tools represent those tools that are used most frequently and are accessible to most students, and the senior tools represent those tools that are specialized and require greater skill and maturity to operate safely.
2025 GEARS team member score table
To further ensure the safety of our members, we implemented the Safe Shop system using Safe Tool Access Control (STAC) devices in our workshop.
Created by a former GEARS member, Safe Shop is an access control system for workshop tools that can be utilized to prevent untrained individuals from using potentially dangerous tools. This system provides an additional layer of protection for our team.
The STAC devices, each equipped with an RFID card reader and keypad, require individuals to be authenticated before granting the user access to a tool. Access is granted or denied by turning on or off power to the tool. The STAC devices all reference a common database, the contents of which are controlled by a web application. The web application allows our mentor to track users and their safety training in order to grant tool access to users appropriately.
The design, development documentation, and source code files are provided as an open-source project in GitLab.
