Nowadays, the surveillance and inspection of underwater installations, such as power and telecommunication cables and pipelines, is carried out by trained operators who, from the surface, control a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) with cameras mounted over it. This is a tedious, time-consuming and expensive task, prone to errors mainly because of loss of attention or fatigue of the operator and ...

This paper proposes a technique for the threedimensional reconstruction of an underwater environment from multiple range views. The final target of the work lies in improving the understanding of a human operator guiding an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with an acoustic camera, which provides a sequence of 3D images in real time. Since the field of view is narrow, we devis...

In this paper we present a methodology for high resolution acoustic bathymetric mapping from a robotic underwater vehicle. Based on data obtained from navigation, attitude, and bathymetric sensors we show that precise calibration of attitude sensors is critical to obtaining high precision bathymetric surveys. We present an in-situ method for precision attitude sensor calibration based upon spec...

This paper presents a control scheme for obtaining high maneuverability of underwater robot manipulators mounted on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The motions of an underwater manipulator can affect the attitude and position of the ROV which should remain stationary in seabed operation. To compensate for the dynamic effect of the underwater manipulator on the ROV, force-torque (F/T) informa...

This paper describes the unmanned underwater remotely operated vehicle (UROV) THETIS, an easy to operate vehicle suitable for exploiting water environments. The subsystems composing our system, as compared to conventional ROVs, are discussed and evaluated. The vehicle’s primary use, at the present stage of development, is to perform underwater observations as well as temperature, pH/dissolved O...

This paper presents a control scheme,for obtaining high maneuverability of underwater robot manipulators mounted on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The motions of an underwater manipulator can aflect the attitude and position of the ROV which should remain stationary in seabed operation. To compensate for the dynamic effect of the underwater manipulator on the ROY force-torque (F/T) informat...

This paper proposes a technique for online three-dimensional reconstruction of underwater environments from multiple range views acquired by an acoustic camera. The final target of the work lies in improving the understanding of a human operator guiding an underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with an acoustic camera, which provides a sequence of 3D images. Since the field of view...

The development of low-cost, open-source Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) systems has provided almost unrestricted access for researchers looking to monitor the marine environment in ever greater resolution. Sampling microbial communities from the marine environment, however, still usually relies on Niskin-bottle sampling (ROV or CTD based), a method which introduces an inaccuracy and variabilit...