Development of Deep Sea ROV "KAIKO7000II"

On May 29, 2003, the KAIKO's secondary cable snapped, and the KAIKO's vehicle has been missing. JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) was decided to remodel the vehicle of UROV7K system instead of the lost vehicle in order to continue the scientific activities. This system is called "KAIKO7000" system. Remodeling of the KAIKO7000 system was finished in March 2004, and KAIKO7000 system was succeeded in the sea trials in 2005. Then, actual science activities that was interrupted by the KAIKO's vehicle lost was resumed in May 2005. During the overhaul of KAIKO7000 system at the end of 2005, the vehicle was remodelled in order to improve its performances such as body size and payload capacity increase with additional buoyancy materials, new powerful manipulator and a compact sized HDTV camera install, and so on. After completed the remolding, KAIKO7000 system is renamed "KAIKO7000II". At sea trials, KAIKO7000II was succeeded in the maximum operation depth test, which was reached at a depth of 7,334 m in May 2006. Also new developed compact sized HDTV camera was tested at the sea, and it can get distinct images of the sea bottom successfully. This paper described about remodelled KAIKO7000II and its operation.