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Communication and Control for Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles

Chapter · January 2022

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-7735-9_22

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 Communication and Control for Remotely
Operated Underwater Vehicles

Thanh Le Xuan1(B) , Tuan Phan Anh2 , Duong Tran Khanh2 , Dong Nguyen2 ,
and Tung Pham Xuan2
1 School of Information and Communication Technology, Hanoi University of Science and
Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
[email protected]
2 School of Transportation Engineering, Hanoi University of Science

and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract. This paper presents a research and development on communication

and control for Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROV). Todays, ROVs
are popular used in oceanic research for purposes, such as current and temperature
measurement, ocean floor mapping and hydrothermal vent detection. ROVs utilize
seafloor mapping, bathymetry, digital cameras, magnetic sensors, and ultrasonic
imaging. In this work, a ROV is designed with a torpedo-shaped. The ROV is
driven by flexible steering system, including a couple of blade ruder in the hor-
izontal direction and a couple of steering thrusters in the vertical direction. For
communication and control the ROV from a Ground Control Station (GCS) on a
mothership or on land, a lightweight messaging protocol for communicating with
ROV based on developing MAVLink has been used. Communication and control
system of the ROV from a GCS are including two steps. The first step, communi-
cation between the ROV and a float is conducted via electrical cable technology.
The float is used as a wireless access point. The companion computer is designed
based on Linux operating system to communicate and transport MAVLink pro-
tocol between the main control system of ROV and the float. The second step,
communication between the float and a GCS on mothership or on land is con-
ducted via wireless technology. The GCS is setup wireless interface with static IP
address, and same router’s gateway with the companion computer.

Keywords: Communication · Control · ROV · GCS · Mothership · MAVLink

1 Introduction
Underwater vehicles like Removed Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROV) and
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) have risen consistently since they were intro-
duced in the 1960s and found their most frequent scientific research use and data col-
lection. Since the 1980s, the offshore oil industry has used ROVs to assist in offshore
development, especially as waters became too deep for human divers to go. Underwater
vehicle systems face more difficulties in operating in unstructured environments than
ground robots, subject to the impact of noise and sensor limitations, leading to difficulty

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022
D. V. K. Huynh et al. (Eds.): VSOE 2021, LNCE 208, pp. 216–221, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7735-9_22
 Communication and Control for Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles 217

in control and operation. ROV is a semi-automatic device with human intervention.

Thanks to this feature, the vehicles are monitored and controlled to minimize the risk
of unexpected incidents. Furthermore, it ensures flexible and stable control in differ-
ent operating environments. However, communication underwater is limited due to the
limitations of electromagnetic radiation in water. Therefore, the research of communi-
cation and control system plays an important role in ROV system. Recently, studies are
investigating the communication and control for ROV and AUV.
Traditionally, communication is fed through a tether or cable using metallic conduc-
tors or fiber optics to transmit and receive data with a single channel RS-232 [1]. It is
a practical and low-cost, but low data rate. Due to cable length or cable entanglement
limitations, wireless methods have also been investigated to improve ROV mobility.
They are based on acoustic and optical communication [2]. However, underwater acous-
tic communication has many problems such as low data transmission, short-range, and
costly [3]. Underwater optical communication has an advanced technology improving
the data rate, long-range, but difficult to maintain and costly [4, 5]. This study develops an
inexpensive communication and control system using tether and wireless to transmit and
receive data between ROV and mothership. The wire communication between ROV and a
float is improved using ethernet, which supports local networks, long-distance, and high
rate data. The wireless communication between a float and mothership is implemented to
increase the long-distance control and ground control system’s mobility. Communication
and control for system are developed based on MAVLink protocol.

2 Hull Form of the Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles

The hull form of the Removed Operated Underwater Vehicle in this study is a torpedo-
shaped ROV. It is including three main parts and make from steel and aluminum. The
fore and the rear of the AUV hull are parabolic shapes, the middle of the AUV hull is a
pipe shape. Total length of the ROV hull is 3.2 m, the diameter of the ROV is 0.3 m. The
ROV has a camera with LED light system in its fore for recording video under water
[6]. Figure 1 shows the main hull form of the ROV.

Fig. 1. Hull form of the ROV

218 T. Le Xuan et al.

3 Propulsive and Steering System

3.1 Propulsive
The Removed Operated Underwater Vehicle uses a main propeller for creating propulsive
force for moving forward and backward. It is a fix pitch propeller with four blades. The
propeller is made by aluminum. Figure 2 shows the main propulsive propeller of the
ROV.

Fig. 2. Propulsive propeller of the ROV

3.2 Steering System

The Removed Operated Underwater Vehicle uses a flexible steering system by combina-
tion of blade rudders and thrusters. For horizontal steering, the ROV is driven by a couple
of blade rudders that have aerodynamic profiles and located at above and below of the
rear of the ROV. Those two blade rudders use the same steering shaft. The steering shaft
is located at the symmetrical plane of the ROV. The steering shaft of the blade rudders
connect to the ROV hull by ball bearings. The blades rudders are rotated and controlled
via steering shaft by a servo motor. The flexible steering system of the ROV is shown in
Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Steering system of the ROV

For vertical steering, the ROV use two thrusters. To enhance the ability to generate
thrust and torque for steering the ROV, the thrusters are set inside ducts. The thrusters
are driven by specialized brushless motors that could be operated normally underwater
environment.
In addition, for increasing the stability for the ROV, a set of three fixed fins is designed.
They are including a bigger fin with hydrodynamic profile of NACA 0025 is placed on
the back of the ROV, two smaller fins placed on left and right at the rear of the ROV.
 Communication and Control for Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles 219

4 Communication and Control

For communication and control the Removed Operated Underwater Vehicle from a
GCS on a mothership or on land, authors have used a lightweight messaging protocol
for communicating with ROV based on developing MAVLink.
MAVLink is a transmission protocol developed to communicate between the un-
manned systems and mother ship or ground control stations. It supports both point-to-
point with retransmission and multicast. It is also equipped with a double checksum
to ensure reliability and message integrity. Both the transmitter and the receiver use
binary serialization in MAVLink for communication. The transmitter transformed the
message into a byte sequence and transmitted them through the network, the receiver
deserialization to get the original message. It gains a significant advantage of reducing
the size of the message compared to other messages’ type [7]. It has two types of
protocol headers, which are version 1 and version 2. The significant improvement of
version 2 compared to version 1 is a signature at the last of protocol header. It develops
the communication security of ensuring that the link is tamper-proof. Figure 4 shows
the structure of MAVLink 2 header, which consists of flags, system IDs, components,
checksum codes and payload data. The data frames can be from 0 to 255 bytes depends
the message type [8].

Fig. 4. MAVLink 2 header

The ROV uses both wire and wireless technologies for communication and control-
ling. The ROV and a float that pulled by the ROV are communicated together via a
cable. The float and a GCS on a mothership or on land are communicated via wireless
technology. In order to communicate and transport protocols between ROV, the float
and the GCS, the network interface is implemented. Figure 5 shows the communication
system for the ROV.

Fig. 5. Communication system

220 T. Le Xuan et al.

4.1 ROV and Float Communication

The communication between the ROV and the float is conducted via electrical cable
technology. It is a cable with 30 m in length. The float is used as a wireless access point.
The companion computer is designed based on Linux operating system to communicate
and transport MAVLink protocol between the main control system of ROV and the float.
The companion computer is functional to forwarding the messages and configure the IP
network interface. The companion computer is setup with static IP address.

4.2 Float and Mothership Communication

The communication between the float and the GCS is conducted via wireless technology.
The maximum distance for communication between the GCS and the float is 500 m. The
float is equipped with wireless router, which is set up with security protocol WPA2 for
protection. The GCS on the mother ship or on land is setup wireless interface with static
IP address, and same router’s gateway with the companion computer.

4.3 Monitoring and Controlling ROV

GCS is developed on the open-source software platform QGroundControl to monitor the
system state and control ROV from the GCS through MAVLink messages, as shown in
Fig. 6. The main control system on ROV sends the state messages to the GCS. Those mes-
sages include information on sensor health, battery status, system status such as angles,
velocities. The command messages are sent from GCS to ROV. Those commands are
designed based on the system requirements, such as move left, right, forward, backward,
or buoyancy control in an emergency. The specific function of command is implemented
on the control system on ROV. The command message format is designed on the XML
file and generated in C++, and embedded in both GCS, companion computer, and a
microcontroller on ROV. On ROV, the ACK (command acknowledgment) is used to
get the command results, such as success, failure, or still in progress. Based on this
response from ROV, people on mothership can know whether or not ROV implemented
that command.

Fig. 6. Diagram of monitoring and controlling ROV

 Communication and Control for Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles 221

5 Conclusions
In this work, authors have developed a communication and control system for a ROV
based on MAVLink. Communication and control system of the ROV from a GCS on
a mothership or on land are including two ways. They are including communication
from ROV to a float and communication from the float to a GCS. Communication
between the ROV and a float is conducted via electrical cable technology. The float is
used as a wireless access point. The companion computer is designed based on Linux
operating system to communicate and transport MAVLink protocol between the main
control system of ROV and the float. Communication between the float and the GCS
on a mother ship or on land is conducted via wireless technology. The GCS is setup
wireless interface with static IP address, and same router’s gateway with the companion
computer.
GCS is developed on the open-source software platform QGroundControl to moni-
tor the system state and control ROV from the mothership through MAVLink messages.
The main control system on ROV sends the state messages to the GCS. Those mes-
sages include information on sensor health, battery status, system status such as angles,
velocities. The command messages are sent from GCS to ROV. Those commands are
designed based on the system requirements, such as move left, right, forward, backward,
or buoyancy control in an emergency.

Acknowledgement. This work is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology with
project code: NÐT.68.RU/19.

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