Development of a human-sized ROV with dual-arm

In this paper, we describe the development of a human-sized remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with dual-arm. The developed ROV was designed to perform biological researches, geological researches and archaeological explorations in Lake Biwa, the biggest lake in Japan. This ROV has two distinguishing characteristics: one is a dual-manipulator system and the other is an attitude control system. The size of the manipulators is related to the size of a human arm so that the ROV can do work that human divers usually do using the arms. The attitude control system is capable of keeping the vehicle in a horizontal plane, and purposely changing the vehicle attitude angle. Additionally, we developed a new master-slave controller system for this ROV. Some fundamental experiments in a diving pool were performed in order to test the capabilities of the developed ROV. After those experiments, a field trial was conducted in Lake Biwa and the ROV carried out some works at a depth of about 10-20 meters.