Power Distribution for Motion Control of URI-T, Underwater Cable Burying ROV

We present the power distribution controller for motion control of remotely operated vehicle (ROV) trencher which is named URI-T. The URI-T carry out various underwater construction tasks including burying and maintenance of cable and small diameter pipeline. The URI-T is launched and recovered, and it has to follow and inspect the cable installed on the seafloor during burying task. In this task, we can give some commands with various combination to the URI-T. Moreover, the URI-T does not supply the sufficient flow to the propulsion system because of a lack of capacity of hydraulic powered unit (HPU). We need a controller to handle propulsion system efficiently. In this paper, we suggest the power distribution controller to control propulsion system. We analyze the hydraulic control system of the URI-T, and model the controller. We take a test to verify the performance of this controller in the water-tank. As a result of the test, the URI-T is controlled by various input combination, and the flow is distributed to the propulsion system.