Design of a new low cost ROV vehicle

Abstract

Remotely operated underwater vehicles which are also known as ROVs are a type of underwater robot vehicle which is widely used in the offshore industry or other applications. The main purpose of this type of tethered underwater mobile robots are tosupersede human to work at hard-to-access or jeopardizing underwater region to do certain specific tasks like to survey a site, search for an item or person that has tremendous value. The remote control of ROV is usually carried out through copper or fiber optic cables which are known as umbilical cables. In this research work a low cost ROV unit has been designed and constructed at UniversitiTeknologi Malaysia (UTM). The ROV was constructed by low cost material like commercial grade polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes. The low cost ROV is equipped with a network camera and manoeuvred by three motors through 12 volts battery power supply. The ROV is controlled by joystick controller through network cable and is able to submerge up to 20meters intowater to perform underwater observation operation