Motion Feasibility Framework for Remotely Operated Vehicles Based on Dynamic Positioning Capability

摘要

Knowing whether a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is able to operate at certain foreknown environmental conditions is a question relevant to different actors during the vehicle's life cycle: during design stages, buying an ROV, planning operations, and performing an operation. This work addresses a framework to assess motion feasibility in ROVs by using the concept of ROV-dynamic positioning capability (ROV-DPCap). Within the proposed framework, the ROV-DPCap number is defined to measure motion capability, and ROV-DPCap plots are used to illustrate results, for quasi-static standard (L2) and site-specific (L2s) conditions, and dynamic standard (L3) and site-specific (L3s) conditions. Data are computed by steady-state or time-domain simulations from the ROV model, depending on the desired analysis. To illustrate the use of the framework, numerical examples for L2 and L2s motion feasibility analyses for NTNU's ROV M_(INERVA) are provided. Motion feasibility can be used to know whether an ROV is appropriately designed for a specific operation and choose the appropriate one for a certain need, for instance, when designing the DP system components or planning an operation from the environmental data and ROV-specific information. As expected, predictions can be improved when more detailed information about the ROV appears; the same framework can be used to provide more detailed answers to motion feasibility-related questions. The results are likely to be straightforwardly understood by people whose work/training is ROV related and can interpret the graphic results for different operation scenarios.