Control system of ROV for underwater safety inspection and operation

  Objectives  In order to achieve safety inspections for surface attachments on hulls, dams and underwater steel structures according to the requirements of removing attachments, a new Remotely Operated Vehicle(ROV) equipped with cables for underwater safety inspection and operation is developed. This type of ROV uses different manipulators for different tasks to achieve the function of gripping and cutting, so as to ensure the removal of the attachments on the structure.

  Methods  Here we describe the composition and principles of a control system of the ROV for underwater safety inspection and operation; this control system uses Arduino microcontroller as a control panel signal acquisition tool, industrial personal computer as a platform of the water surface monitoring system, zero buoyancy umbilical cable consisting of two pairs of twisted pairs and a pair of power cables as the means of the signal power transmission, and ARM embedded underwater control system as the main control unit; we establish the ROV dynamics model, and design the Generalized Predictive Controller(GPC)of ROV heading control.

  Results  The commissioned system is normal; tank test and lake test in Qiandao Lake prove that the stability, reliability and real-time performance of the entire control system meet the design requirements and the requirements of underwater safety inspection and operation.

  Conclusions  The design scheme and control algorithm of this system can provide reference for the control system of other ROVs.