2010 8th IEEE International Conference on ThB6.

3
Control and Automation
Xiamen, China, June 9-11, 2010

Development, Depth Control and Stability Analysis of an

Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)
Nima Harsamizadeh Tehrani, Mahdi Heidari, Yadollah Zakeri, Jafar Ghaisari, Member, IEEE

Abstract— Underwater robots especially Remotely Operated The design of “DENA” is performed with the aim of
Vehicles (ROV) are designed to perform different tasks in designing a low cost and upgradeable platform to build
extreme conditions in depth of oceans all over the world. The much-complicated robots in future. Design of “DENA” is
utilization of such robotic vehicles has gained an increasing discussed in more details in this paper.
importance in many marine activities. The purpose of this
paper is to explain the design, stability analysis and the
Design of DENA had three major parts.
problem of depth control of “DENA” the ROV from 1) Mechanical analysis and simulation, performed
underwater robotics team of Isfahan University of Technology. by CAD softwares like Catia and Fluent.
“DENA” is a small size; low cost, and an educational proposes 2) Electrical boards: design and simulation using
ROV, which has six thrusters, one manipulator arm with a Orcad, PCB design using Protel.
unique electrical design, which makes it easy to handle
different equipments in future. As the importance and the 3) User interfaces design, using VB.NET.
complexity of the tasks performed by ROV increase, the need
for automatic control schemes that guarantee high
performances in motion and positioning has become a basic
issue in underwater automation. At this regard, a control
schemes, based on PID technique for Auto depth Control and
the equations for Roll & Pitch stability are proposed .

I. INTRODUCTION

R OV or Remotely Operated Vehicle is a robot, which can

play an important role in marine industries especially
construction of offshore gas and oil facilities. This robot
consists of a main mechanical structure holding several
thrusters, cameras and some equipment such as manipulator
Arm and sampling units with proper electronic modules to
control these units .The robot is connected to a surface unit
by means of a multi conductor cable called “Tether”. This
cable transfers the control signals, video signals and power
between the surface unit and the ROV. The surface unit
consists of a power source and a pilot cabin. The power
source provides the energy for the ROV and makes it
independent of onboard batteries. The pilot cabin is a unit Fig. 1. major parts of designing
that receives the instructions from the operator and transfers
In this project, the problem of depth regulation for DENA
them to the ROV via the tether. This part can be as complex is inspected. The main attempt is to develop a controller that
as a cockpit in industrial and very Huge ROVs or simple can guarantee the limitation of the overshoot in the system
with only a computer and a joystick in low cost and small response. In fact, overshoot in the system response to depth
ones. setpoint are particularly important when the vehicle operates
in a dangerous environment, like that found in offshore
N. H. Tehrani is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering structures or during archeological activities. The PID depth
Department, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran (e-mail: controller is presented, while simulation results are reported.
[email protected]).
M. Heidari is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, In last section the equations that guarantee Roll and Pitch
Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran (e-mail: stability are presented which are a necessary, but not
[email protected]).
Y. Zakeri is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department,
sufficient, condition to state that the ROV is stabilizable at
Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran (e-mail: the equilibrium point.
[email protected]).
G. Ghaisari is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran (e-mail:
[email protected]).

978-1-4244-5196-8/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 814

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ThB6.3

II. MECHANICS and right and two additional motors placed for lateral moves.
“DENA” has two major mechanical units, which play
important role in performing different missions. The first
unit is a well-designed mechanical Structure which helps the
ROV to be stable with a good maneuvering ability and a safe
and reliable place for all electrical and control units inside
the ROV. The second is four DOF (Degree Of Freedom)
underwater manipulator which is used by the operator in
various tasks such as sampling and transporting tools.
Fig. 3. Motor housing

A. Structure
D. Manipulator
The ROV is designed Close-Frame which means that there
As shown in “Figure 4”, A 4 Degree Of Freedom (DOF)
is Hull in designing and different parts of the robot such as
thrusters, electrical boards, cameras and manipulator are manipulator is designed to help the operator, grab various
waterproofed and mounted on different places in a objects and perform underwater tasks including transporting
aluminum structure called frame. These waterproofed units objects. Two underwater cameras help the operator to have a
are connected together by means of special connectors good supervision on the mechanical arm at the mission one
(called Wet Connectors) and sealed Hoses. mounted on the ROV frame and the other fixed on the
manipulator behind the Grabber which provides an excellent
view when working with small objects.
A large verity of End-Effectors could be designed for this
manipulator to perform more specialized tasks including
welding and drilling.

Fig. 2. ROV thruster configuration

B. Maneuver
In order to have different maneuvers, DENA has five
thrusters mounted on the Aluminum Frame. There are two
vertical thrusters which help the robot to change depth while
two horizontal sides perform in-plane maneuvers such as
Fig. 4. “4 DOF” Underwater manipulator
going forward, backward and of course turning to the left
and right. As a need to have lateral movement, two extra
horizontal thrusters are re placed at front and back of the
ROV. DENA has the maximum speed of “1 m/s” and can III. ELECTRONICS AND CONTROL
handle different tasks in depth no more than 15 meters.
The control system and electronics of DENA has
similarities and changes in comparison to the DENA which
C. Thrusters was designed and built in 2007. Both ROVs utilize real time
Nowadays, industrial ROVs utilize high power, high Camera pictures as a main feedback for the operator to
efficiency underwater thrusters, which are very expensive identify the environment and different goals and obstacles in
for an educational, propose ROV so the thrusters for DENA around the robot. The surface unit is not changed much and
are designed by use of low-cost, low power 24V DC motors. it is almost similar to the previous version but the new ROV
Each thruster consists of a DC motor which is mounted in a is designed differently in electrical systems. Instead of two
Teflon waterproofed Cylinder and sealed by a metal cap at tiny “Control” and “Power “ boards in DENA I, DENA II
the end. A stuffing- box is placed on the other side to has 5 electronic boards consist of a ” Control Board”, a
waterproof the Motor shaft as shown in “Figure 3”. ROV has “Power Board”, an “Arm-Sensor board” and two identical
two vertical thrusters, two horizontal thrusters located on left “Thruster board” which make the new design completely

815

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ThB6.3

modular and easy to maintain and configure for different motor. Control board provides 4 control signals for selection
tasks. The electrical and control system is discussed in more of direction and one PWM signal for controlling the speed of
details in following sections. rotation for each dual motor driver. These drivers have
thermal shutdown circuits that prevent the driver from being
damaged under extreme conditions. Two identical “Thruster
A. Power Board
Board” are installed in The ROV to help the control of 6
Surface unit provides the ROV power by use of two ROV thruster.
identical Phoenix Contact AC/DC converters, each capable
of providing up to 10A current in 24 V DC. This power is
transferred to the ROV by means of some conductors
through the tether and directly feeds the ROV Power board.
Power board provides regulated 24V DC voltage with up to
15 currents for main thrusters while 12V line is provided by
use of 4 high-efficiency MINMAX MPW1033 DC/DC
converters. This 12 line provides the power for cameras,
Video processor and motor Drivers of mechanical
manipulator. Part of this power is used to make essential 5V
line for logical units and microcontrollers.

B. Control Board
The Pilot, controls the ROV by joysticks attached to a
computer, the program receives the commands and translates
them to specific code words and sends them via the tether
using RS232. ROV control board as the main control
module in the ROV has the ability to decode these
instructions and execute them. The board consists of two
AVR Atmega16 microcontrollers, which have different
tasks. One Microcontroller called “Main Micro” is
responsible for moving commands of ROV such as
ascending and descending, turning and moving forward and Fig. 5. ROV control diagram
backward in water while the “Equipment Micro” handles the
operations related to the tools installed on the ROV to D. Arm-Sensor Board
perform different missions such as Controlling the ROV This board is designed to control the ROV manipulator,
manipulator. Use of two microcontrollers instead of one lights and some extra equipment that might be attached to
main processor has many advantages over some complexity the ROV for different missions. Beside that there are some
in hardware architecture of the robot. The main advantage of wave shaping circuits to modify the output of sensors and
this configuration is the ease of changing the ROV program scale them to the full range of A/D converters.
for different missions. For example the ROV can be
E. ROV Main Control Program
modified to have different maneuvers just by changing the
program of the “Main Micro” while installing new A program written in Visual Basic .NET is executed on a
equipment on the ROV is completed by some modification computer in the surface unit to receive the control instruction
in the program of “Equipment Micro”. See “Figure 5” from joysticks and keyboard and send the proper code words
Both microcontrollers receive the commands by a to the ROV based on a defined Protocol between ROV and
common RX line from RS232 but only the “Main Micro” the surface unit. Besides that, this program provides real-
can send back information such as sensors data to the time information about the status of the ROV for the
surface unit. AVR Atmega16 microcontroller has several operator and helps him to have good supervision on different
internal A/D converters and can generate up to 4 PWM parts of the robot in a mission. This program consists of 3
(Pulse Width Modulation) pulses. These PWM pulses are layers. The “GUI (Graphical User Interface) “ layer is
used in speed controlling the ROV thrusters. designed to communicate with the operator via forms,
graphs and other types of visual aids while the “Software”
C. Thruster Board layer performs computations and tasks related to changing
Thruster board consists of 2 separate dual motor drivers the operator instructions to their counterpart code-words.
Each having two high power L6203 DC motor drivers which Software layer also extracts the information received from
can control a pair of ROV thrusters. These drivers with the ROV and sends them to the GUI layer. ”Interface” layer
internal H-Bridge can easily change the Direction of rotation is designed to establish a reliable connection between the
for each thruster by changing the flow of current in the user control program and the ROV control board. This layer

816

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ThB6.3

receives the code words from the Software layer and sends
them in proper time to the ROV by the serial port after each
transmission this layer receives information from the ROV
including the data from ROV sensors and passes them to the
Software layer.

Fig. 7. Closed-loop feedback system

Fig. 6. Proof of concept prototype of "DENA"

IV. DEPTH CONTROL METHOD

In this section two different control schemes for depth

regulation of DENA are presented and their performances
are compared. The first one is a unit feedback control
system. The main concern in the design of the controller is
to keep the amplitude of the overshoot in the response
drastically limited to a depth set-point change, while keeping
the response time reasonably contained. Reasons are, as
Fig. 8. Step response for Closed-loop feedback system
already pointed out, the necessity of assuring vehicle
integrity while operating near the bottom or in proximity of
submersed installations and the need to prevent possible B. PID Control System
cable stresses, without compromising the system efficiency.
To reduce the overshoot and steady-state error, it is
The second control scheme considered is based on a PID possible to adopt a PID controller given by
controller which shows more satisfactory performances.
‫ܿܩ‬ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ  ൌ ‫ ݌ܭ‬൅ ‫݅ܭ‬Ȁ‫ ݏ‬൅ ‫݀ܭ‬Ǥ ‫ݏ‬ (2)
A. Unit Feedback Control System
Through a pressure sensor, we obtain the depth of the
ROV, the following equation is considered,

‫ ݌‬ൌ ߩ݄݃ǡ ߩ ൌ ͳͲͲͲǡ ݃ ͳͲ 

‫݌‬
݄ ൌ  ൗͳͲ ൈ ͳͲͲͲ ൌ ‫ ݌‬ൈ  ͳͲିସ (1)

Comparing the depth with the set-point will close the

loop. The general adopted scheme of the controlled system
is the one depicted in Fig. 7, where the vehicle is represented
by the Transfer Fcn block. The step response of this system
is shown in Fig. 8.
Fig. 9. PID control scheme

817

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ThB6.3

BG is the restoring force given by the difference of the

Given the simple structure and robust performances in a gravitational (W) and buoyant forces (B).
wide range of operating condition, in many real control
system and, in particular, in many ROVs, PID controllers are ‫ܩܤ‬௑ ൌܺீ െ ܺ஻ 
widely used. In many of the practical tasks in which the ‫ܩܤ‬௒ ൌܻீ െ ܻ஻ 
ROVs are requested to perform, PID control system ‫ܩܤ‬௓ ൌܼீ െ ܼ஻ (6)
performances are satisfactory.
At the equilibrium point,

‫ ׎‬ൌ ߠ ൌ Ͳ ՜ ‫ ߠܯ‬ൌ ‫ ׎ܯ‬ൌ Ͳ (7)

‫ܩܤ‬௒ ൌ Ͳǡ‫ܩܤ‬௑ ൌ Ͳ (8)
Therefore,
‫ ׎ܯ‬ൌ ‫ܩܤ‬௓ ܹ‫׎ܱܵܥߠܱܵܥ‬ (9)
‫ ߠܯ‬ൌ ‫ܩܤ‬௓ ܹܵ‫ߠܰܫ‬ (10)
BGZ is Metacentric height, the distance between center of
mass and center of volume at vertical axis.
As it is clear, the momentums are directly proportionate to
metacentric height.

VI. CONCLUSION
Project DENA was an attempt to design and build an
educational underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV).
This robot includes a surface unit to receive instruction from
operator for providing control commands and power for the
Fig. 10. Step response for PID control system
ROV, a mechanical unit with 6 thrusters, one 4 degree of
freedom waterproofed manipulator and an electrical unit of 5
boards, 4 cameras and a video processor unit. Various
V. STABILIZABILITY
softwares such as ORCAD and PROTEL performed the
electrical designs and simulations. Mechanical structures
Newtonian formalism can be adopted to derive a general
model that describes the dynamics of the ROV. including main Frame and the manipulator arm are designed
Considering the dynamics equations of an underwater and simulated by CATIA. A PID controller is developed for
vehicle, we obtain Auto-depth control of the vehicle and the system equations
‫ܸܯ‬ሶ ൅  ‫ܥ‬ሺ௏ሻ ܸ ൅  ‫ܦ‬ሺ௏ሻ ܸ ൅ ݃ሺߤሻ ൌ ߬ are presented which are a practical way to stabilize the
ߤሶ ൌ ‫ܬ‬ሺߤሻܸ (3) movement of the ROV..

where M combines the inertia of the vehicle as a rigid VII. FUTURE IMPROVEMENT
body and the added inertia due to the acceleration of the DENA was a short step toward a fully Autonomous
fluid, ‫ܥ‬ሺ௏ሻ groups together centripetal and Coriolis terms, Underwater Vehicle (AUV). By further research in control
‫ܦ‬ሺ௏ሻ contains the terms due to the hydrodynamic damping, and autonomous systems, we can use this platform for
݃ሺߤሻ combines gravitational and buoyancy forces in the designing an AUV. Tether is a limit for the maneuvers of
body frame coordinates and represents the external applied the ROV and to have a ROV free of tether, we should find
forces and torques in the body frame. practical ways to transfer the video signal from the ROV to
the surface unit. The electromagnetic waves cannot be
Vector ߬ represents the control inputs, namely the forces
propagated in water and the acoustic channels have very
and torques generated by thrusters, and disturbances caused small bandwidth that prevents us from transferring video
by the umbilical’s traction. signals through the water. So, further research on underwater
Theoretically, to stabilize the ROV at the equilibrium communication systems has enormous effects in future of
point, the gravitational and buoyancy forces in the body ROVs.
frame must be equal to zero. If ‫ ׎‬and ߠ represent the Roll
and Pitch, the following equations are considered for Roll &
REFERENCES
Pitch momentums,
[1] Isfahan University of Technology ROV team, “Project: DENA”, 2007
‫ ׎ܯ‬ൌ െ‫ܩܤ‬௒ ܹ‫ ׎ܱܵܥߠܱܵܥ‬൅ ‫ܩܤ‬௓ ܹ‫( ׎ܰܫܵߠܱܵܥ‬4)
MATE International ROV Competition technical reports, June 2007.
‫ ߠܯ‬ൌ ‫ܩܤ‬௓ ܹܵ‫ ߠܰܫ‬൅ ‫ܩܤ‬௑ ܹ‫׎ܱܵܥߠܱܵܥ‬ (5) [2] Isfahan University of Technology ROV team “Project: DENA”, 2008
MATE International ROV Competition technical reports,
Unpublished.

818

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ThB6.3

[3] Isfahan University of Technology ROV team “Project: DENA”, 2009

MATE International ROV Competition technical reports,
Unpublished.
[4] P. Sinha, K. R. Stiehl, E. S. Huo, O. A. Oyebode, R. P. Dokov, S. J.
Chin, R. E. Price, R. W. Larson, “ Design of a Modular, Compact,
Multi-Role Remotely Operated Vehicle for Sheltered Water
Operations”, IEEE OCEANS2007, Vancouver, CA, pp.1-7.
[5] S. M. Zanoli, G. Conte," Remotely operated vehicle depth control",
Control Engineering Practice, vol 11, pp.453-459, 2003.
[6] C. S. Chin, M. W. Shing Lau, E. Low, G. G. Lee Seet. "A Robust
Controller Design Method Aand Stability Analysis of an
Underactuated Underwater Vehicle", Int. J. Appl. Math. Comput. Sci.,
2006, vol 16, No. 3, pp.345-356.
[7] D. J. Csepp , “ROV Operation from a Small Boat”, MTS Journal,
Summer 2005.

819

Authorized licensed use limited to: Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute. Downloaded on October 21,2022 at 07:24:04 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.