“ROVer”-Low-Cost ROV for Innovative Ocean Education and Discovery

摘要

This paper presents a low-cost, highly flexible hexagonal ROV that meets the requirement of oceanic exploration, discovery and particularly attracting for the marine science education. “ROVer” is an open-frame remote-controlled underwater vehicle with redundant safe design that has a protective design in terms of power drive and is suitable for students to construct ROVs in schools or off-campus environments and for underwater detection. The common low-cost raw PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) material is used as the frame support to reduce the weight and cost. The main structure with the hexahedron significantly improves the space utilization rate of the ROV’s inner cabin and payload capability. The well designed control and communication system enables the real time observation and control functionality for users. This ROV is equipped with an image processing module to the software design for the shape recognition function of the vehicle. Several water pool tests have successfully proved ROVer’s remote operation, image detection and video recording capabilities.