Development and Experiments of a Novel Deep-sea Resident ROV

Abstract

It is extremely difficult and expensive to operate a traditional remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in the deep-sea. In this paper, a novel small-scale deep-sea resident ROV, called Rover ROV, is designed to conduct regional fine-sounding operations. The Rover ROV does not require a complicated Launch and Recovery System (LARS) equipped on a surface vessel, instead, the Rover ROV can be placed on a deep-sea lander and diving to the seafloor together. To ensure sufficient energy for the Rover ROV and meanwhile reduce the complexity of the conventional Tether Management System (TMS), a combined energy supply scheme based on floating charging technology is proposed. This power supply solution avoids relying solely on strong cables to provide power. To validating the maneuverability of the self-developed resident ROV and the effectiveness of the combined energy supply solution, Field experiments have been conducted in the South China Sea area with a depth of 3000 m. The results show that the developed small-scale resident ROV system can be operated in deep-sea high-power scenario, which verifies the higher reliability and longtime working capability of the proposed system.