A Study on Unmanned Surface Vehicle Combined with Remotely Operated Vehicle System

摘要

In this paper, we proposed a new hybrid system that combines an USV and the ROV. It is designed to overcome the cumulative navigation error and the battery problem for long time operation. The USV is connected to the underwater robot with a tether cable that enables GPS data transmission and stable power supply. In addition, by installing a winch system on the USV, it is possible to move and to retrieve the ROV for long distance travel and for depth control. The ROV equipped with underwater sensors which can acquire underwater image capture and undersea topography information and can transmit it to the land through the USV in real time was designed. Line-of-sight navigation and dynamic positioning algorithm were studied for the USV to perform autonomous navigation and keeping-position while ROV is doing underwater operations. Good performance of the USV was verified by simulation and real sea experiment using the developed hybrid USV and ROV.