Remotely Operated Vehicle for Surveilance Applications On and Under Water Surface

— This paper presents the low cost hardware prototype of a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) for surveilance applications. The vehicle is designed to make maneuvers under water and on surface of water, where its movement is guided remotely via a GHz-scale wireless communication system. The main electronic control unit (ECU) of the vehicle is an 8-bit microcontroller, which is used to control 6 motor actuators. Two motors are embedded in a ballast tank used for pumping and draining in and out of the ballast tank. While, the other four motors are used for vehicle movements on water surface. One wireless transceiver is embedded in a joystick and the other is separately placed in the waterproof box mounted on the vehicle. The performance tests present that, in general, the ROV can be controlled well with limited performance. The total weight of the vehicle is 10.35kg with weight density of 0.89kg/ltr. (Abstract)