ROV control system upgrade

Remora III, a 6,000-meter rated Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) designed, built, and operated by Phoenix International Holdings, Inc. (Phoenix), has performed extremely well during its 16 years of service as a search and recovery vehicle. While several mechanical upgrades have been made to the vehicle during this period, the desire to increase Remora´s service capability and operational availability necessitated an upgrade to its control system. Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) technology was selected to serve this purpose due to its many advantages including proven reliability, world-wide availability, future expansion of capabilities by simply adding modules, and easy to program interfaces. Phoenix´s previous experience in implementing PLCs for ROV control systems includes work completed on the U.S. Navy´s Deep Drone ROV upgrade and the design/build of the U.S. Navy´s new Hydros ROV.