Design and Fabrication of Under Water Remotely Operated Vehicle

Abstract

Underwater Remotely Operated vehicle is a tethered mobile vehicle most often used to monitor underwater oil and gas drilling inspection, telecommunications and homeland security. The main focus of this research is to design a vehicle at low cost which is safe, portable, and easy to use while increasing the maneuverability and efficiency to reach a depth of 5 meters. While conducting research a unique design is selected based on a novel fin propulsion mechanism rather than propellers. Propellers though have high speed but cannot work on low flow rates and their blades can be damaged if jelly fish or other material is struck in its shaft. Two shapes have been considered to remove above difficulties i.e. Fish and Turtle. Due to higher stability, larger area and greater hydrodynamic efficiency Sea Turtle has been selected, as it can easily overcome the forces like buoyancy, pressure and thrust force. The results extracted from this research shows that the underwater vehicles based on the biological locomotion principle can perform very well than other propeller counterparts. The research concludes with the performance of a working system that validates motion capabilities related to speed, depth and hydrodynamic efficiency which can be further improved by using sophisticated control systems, outer shell and highly integrated processors.