Engineering ORCA

Project Description

An underwater vehicle (UWV) is an underwater robot that helps carry out certain tasks for which it can be customized and designed. A Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) is a highly manoeuvrable underwater robot that can be used to explore ocean depths and is controlled by a human operator. A group of cables, or tethers, connects the ROV to a manned controlling station, sending data and operational instructions in the form of electrical signals back and forth between the operator and the vehicle.

Our robot, named ORCA, is a 500 x 350 x 210 mm inspection class ROV. It weighs 10.24Kgs and houses various sensors (temperature, pressure, leak sensor, Inertial Measurement Unit) and a camera to carry out underwater missions. This 6-thruster model is driven by a navigation suite that takes manual control instructions through a joystick, maps them to desired levels of thrust and rudder values and relays them to the actuators to achieve on-demand movement of the vehicle. The navigation suite is built on top of a set of open-source C++ modules namely, Mission Oriented Operating Suite - Interval Programming (MOOS-IvP).

ORCA has been bench-tested and subsequently pool-tested in shallow water regions. It was able to carry out multiple 5-15 minute long straight line missions with consistent data collection through sensors and satisfactory manoeuvrability in all 6 degrees of freedom.