INNOVATIVE NEW ROV TECHNOLOGY

Today, Remotely Operated Vehicles, or ROV’s, are the dominating type of vehicles for underwater operations and very much the working horse of the North Sea, and both the military and the scientific sectors are increasing their use of ROVs. An ROV is normally designed for underwater work using oil hydraulics or electricity for propulsion and tool control. ROV’s using the surrounding water itself as the energy carrier for propulsion and tool control has never been successfully developed. The paper presents research results on a new ROV with water hydraulic propulsion system is being developed at Bergen University College. The design of the propulsion system is based on components available on the market. The ROV will have two thrusters for manoeuvring in the horizontal plane, and one thruster for vertical positioning. Static calculations and dynamic simulations have been performed to investigate the performance of the water hydraulic propulsion system. The simulations have been performed applying VisSim. The flow control valve has been tested to investigate the capability of flow regulation at low flow rates. Furthermore, this paper presents the selected experimental results and performance results.