Development of ROV based water tank cleaning robot

Abstract

Clean water supply is important in ensuring good health of people. Water supply is distributed from water storage tanks. Sediment that accumulates over time in water storage tanks will deteriorate the water quality used by consumers. Therefore, water storage tanks are required to be cleaned once in every three years by water utility operators or tank cleaning service providers. Manual cleaning method is done by draining off and resupply water into the tank after workers have cleaned the tank using water jet and brushes. In this paper, an alternative cleaning method using a Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROV) is proposed. Using ROV, water supply disruption can be prevented and cleaning process will be more efficient and cost effective. An ROV is built to operate underwater and vacuum out sediments from water tank. Operator on screen can see live-streaming video. Raspberry Pi is used as the main communication board to interface with MATLAB. Operator will operates the ROV remotely to carry out the cleaning process. IMU sensor was also used for simulation study in MATLAB for orientation movements testing.