Automatic optical station keeping and navigation of an ROV; sea trial experiments

In earlier work, the authors have described the development of a vision system in support of the autonomous operation or operated-assisted missions of AUVS and ROVs near the ocean bottom, S. Negahdaripour et al. (1998). The seafloor images, acquired by a down-look camera installed on the submersible platform, are processed by the vision system in order to detect and estimate its motion in real time. This information is utilized to realize a number of capabilities, including automatic station keeping, navigation and trajectory following, and the construction of a composite (mosaic) image of the seafloor. This paper describes preliminary sea trial experiments to evaluate the performance of the vision system on a Phantom XTL ROV.