Design and development of a remotely operated vehicle and its control system

Abstract

This paper describes a design for a new type of Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and a system to control it. The ROV and its control system are part and parcel. The control part of the ROV includes the Data Acquisition Program. The Data Acquisition Program is a GUI-based computer program that allows the operator of the ROV to visualize telemetry data from the ROV. It provides near-instantaneous communication with the ROV. The computer-aided design of the prototype is made using Autodesk’s Fusion 360. Then the design was converted to Stereolithography (STL) format and passed through a slicing software called Cura in preparation for 3D printing. An Ender 3D printer was used to manufacture the parts of the design, using Polylactic Acid Thermoplastic Polymer. Computational Fluid Dynamics is conducted to analyze the fluid hydrodynamics (water and pressure flow rates) around the hull of the remotely operated vehicle and the drag force acting on it. Several experimental results have shown the effectiveness of the remotely operated vehicle design.