Design of control system of torpedo shaped ROV with experimental results

This paper presents the main features of the ROV Minesniper MkII system developed by Kongsberg ASA. The mission task is to reach and destroy a mine. An overview of the vehicle design is provided along with a description of the major hardware components and sensor system. Also included is the vehicle model and the control system which at present time consists of a passive nonlinear observer and PID controllers. Experimental results show robustness in the control system in the presence of disturbance. The main focus has been on robustness in the navigation system. Therefore, a modified line-of-sight navigation system is utilized which has shown to provide satisfactory results. The key feature of this method is that by shortening the LOS vector more accurate navigation is possible. This method is used for both heading and pitch control. Results from full scale tests and simulation are presented.