Submarine ROV

Overview

A submarine ROV is an unmanned, tethered underwater robot flown by a pilot at the surface for inspection, survey and light intervention work, on tasks such as hull surveys, pipeline checks, dam and offshore-structure inspection and search operations. An umbilical tether carries power and high-bandwidth fiber-optic video and control between the surface and the vehicle. This is an inspection-class machine rated to 300 meters, with six thrusters for full maneuverability, a camera and sonar payload, and a small manipulator arm.

The vehicle is built on an open Frame Assembly, a machined aluminium chassis trimmed with syntactic foam for near-neutral buoyancy. Its electronics ride inside the Electronics Enclosure, a watertight acrylic tube with O-ring-sealed end caps housing the flight controller and motor drivers. Six Thruster units provide vectored propulsion in all axes, fed by the onboard Power Pack. The Tether System links the vehicle to the surface, the Sensor Suite supplies vision, sonar and navigation data, the Manipulator Arm performs light tasks, and the Ballast & Trim trims buoyancy.

How it works

The vehicle is ballasted to hover at neutral buoyancy, so its thrusters only have to move it rather than fight a constant tendency to sink or float. The pilot's commands travel down the fiber-optic tether to the main control board, which drives the brushless thrusters through the ESC board; four horizontal thrusters mounted at angles let the vehicle move and yaw in the plane, while two vertical thrusters control depth and pitch. The pressure-tolerant acrylic tube and O-ring-sealed bulkhead penetrators keep seawater out of the electronics, with a leak sensor watching for ingress. The IMU and depth sensor feed an attitude-and-depth hold loop so the craft can station-keep against currents. Live HD video from the camera, lit by the LED lights, and a sonar picture stream back up the tether to the pilot's console. When intervention is needed, the operator works the servo-driven manipulator arm to grasp or recover objects, and trim weights are set before each dive to balance the vehicle for its payload.