Design and development of an RS232-based ROV controller system

The overall design of an underwater robot which includes the design of electro-mechanical components and the control circuit diagrams are introduced. The software is also concurrently developed to meet the needs of hardware set-up. The control principle of the system components and their relationships are elucidated. This underwater robot is controlled by the keyboard key, while the feedback data from the robot are displayed on the screen of a host computer in real-time. This is a low-cost, but highly reliable control set-up, suitable for shallow water underwater application, such as typical surface inspection and sampling operation.