ROVBus: A modular electronics backbone for flexible ROV capability integration

This paper presents “ROVBus,” a communications framework tailored to custom ROV development, that enables plug-and-play interconnection of various component tools via a unified communications bus. The flexibility provided by this approach enables easy custom tooling for various ROV frameworks and allows them to be tailored to a range of applications. The paper will describe the ROVBus system architecture at a block diagram level and will explore how this system architecture can be used to quickly adapt a common ROV backbone on a project by project basis. Successes and challenges in achieving the desired flexibility and rapid development will be discussed.