Realtime motion compensation for ROV-based tele-operated underwater manipulators

This paper presents a novel underwater movement compensation algorithm for stabilization of manipulator position utilizing not ROV movements for disturbance compensation, but overlaid manipulator movements. A model based estimator is used to predict vehicle movement and provide the manipulation system with the necessary time to compensate for the estimated motion. It describes the conceptual benefits of this approach compared with common station-keeping algorithms, and shows how previous methods can be combined with the new approach in order to further improve manipulator position accuracy. The method is validated in a number of experiments, which show its feasibility and outstanding performance.