Short range position measurement systems for underwater vehicle dynamic positioning

This paper presents a comparative study of position measurement systems for dynamic positioning (DP) of remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV´s) based on: speed logs, inertial navigation, long or short baseline acoustic systems, taut-wire and passive arm (PA). From this study, the PA was selected as the most adequate system for ROV DP when the tasks are to be performed only in a limited neighborhood of some underwater structure. A prototype passive arm based DP system is currently being designed. Simulations and preliminary experimental results have indicated that the proposed system can achieve satisfactory performance