Virtual platform of a remotely operated vehicle

A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) carrying an underwater manipulator plays an important role in underwater operations. In this paper, we develop a virtual platform of a ROV to animate operation tasks under the sea. The ROV model refers to the structure of a typical ROV which performs operation tasks below the ocean´s surface 1000 meters and the manipulator model refers to a master-slave servo hydraulic manipulator with seven functions developed by Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA), Chinese Academy of Sciences. The virtual platform is used for training an operator to teleoperate the ROV under the sea by coordinating a pan-tilt camera, the ROV main body, and the underwater manipulator. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the virtual platform, we present two typical underwater operation tasks: maintaining a subsea platform and clearing a tethered mine.