Design of Small Monitoring ROV for Aquaculture

This work addresses a realization of a compact ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) for monitoring in a dark and turbid aquaculture environment. A six degree-of-freedom ROV with four thrusters is implemented, in which a novel structure is proposed to solve the heeling problem better. In addition, a lighting system with wide and uniform light field and a biaxial imaging platform are designed based on the principle of convex lens scattering analysis. The simulation and tank experiment results illustrate the effectiveness of the designed ROV on steadily and flexibly. It achieves moving forward at a velocity of 0.17m/s at 50HZ artificial flow, and cruising at a fixed depth with up to 5 hours battery life. The designed ROV exhibits better comprehensive performance than other small ROVs for the turbid aquaculture environments.