Self-management of ROV umbilical using sliding buoys and stop

Christophe Viel (1, 2, 3)

1 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
2 Lab-STICC - Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance
3 Lab-STICC_ROBEX - Equipe ROBotics for EXploration

The umbilical of Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) has two main problems: it is subject to entanglement with obstacles or itself, and its shape is difficult to predict for the navigation. To address these issues, this article proposes a passive self-management of an ROV's umbilical, suitable for underwater and seafloor exploration. By adding two buoys moving freely on the umbilical, the described method avoids self-entanglement of the cable by stretching it, and gives it a predictable shape. A fast time computational model of the cable is proposed to provide feedback to the operator. The buoys move on their own to keep the cable taut without a motorized system, making this method easy to adapt to existing ROVs with few constraints on their navigation. Simulations and experimentation in pool show the effectiveness of the method. The influence of currents is discussed.

Mots clés: Underwater robotics; cables management; cables model

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Christophe Viel. Self-management of ROV umbilical using sliding buoys and stop. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 2022, ⟨10.1109/LRA.2022.3187267⟩. ⟨hal-03513290v3⟩