A novel self-locking mechanism to connect two ROVs

This paper describes a novel self-locking connection mechanism used to connect two ROVs, a mother (LATIS) and daughter ROV (VideoRay), for subsea operations. The necessity to develop a new topology of connection mechanism arose during an off-shore wreck survey whereby the ROVs were connected by a custom designed hook and ring system. During the trials, despite satisfactory performance of the custom hook, the necessity to develop a new hooking system to facilitate, accelerate and improve safety conditions of the engage and disengage procedure became evident. The interconnecting umbilical cable feed to the daughter ROV´s is managed by coiling/uncoiling it around the mother ROV via coordinated motion of the both ROVs. During the coil phase, the umbilical cable is guided into its holding slots by a B shape frame positioned at each corner of the LATIS. The new self-locking mechanism is designed to operate without a power supply or hydraulic drive but instead its geometry and the constituent springs facilitate daughter ROV locking / unlocking with daughter ROV thrusters alone.