Experiments in Low Cost High Precision Motion Control for ROVs

The problem of low-cost high precision motion control of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in the proximity of the seabed through vision-based motion estimation is addressed in this paper. The proposed approach consists in the integration of a monocular vision system for the estimate of the vehicle’s linear motion with a dual-loop hierarchical architecture for kinematics and dynamics control. Results obtained by operating at sea the Romeo ROV are presented.