Video communications for the untethered submersible rover

ROVER is an untethered remotely operated vehicle designed to support studies in through-water communications and control, man-machine interaction trials, and developments in the ANGUS-ROVER shuttle vehicle concept. The paper reports progress of research under the headings of high-data-rate through-water acoustics, bandwidth reduction techniques and a CCD frame store system, and gives a status report on the ROVER submersible and associated activities. Video signalling has been achieved at rates of up to 200 K bits/sec and a novel combined TV-frame store system has been successfully demonstrated.