Have you ever taken an ROV caving?

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rov

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Dunellon FL, USA
Mostly I drive one of the smaller ROVs, the VideoRay. It only weighs 8 pounds, so one person can handle the whole thing. For those who might be rather unfamiliar with underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles, the VideoRay is basically a yellow submarine with lights and a TV camera on a 250 foot string, called a ‘tether.” The craft has three motors, one on each side for forward and reverse thrust and turning, and one for going up and down in the water. You drive the thing with a joystick and the visual display from the camera, which can be displayed on any NTSC capable device, such as a TV monitor. While it can be handled by one person, it is usually nice to have an additional person to act as “tether tender,” so the thing doesn’t get all tangled up. Usually there is little problem getting some bystander to help.

There isn’t a whole lot of “neat stuff” that I’ve seen. Well, “neat” as far as SCUBA diving is concerned. I am constantly amazed at some of the weird places I wind up. Being as how the ROV is kinda small, it can go places that no human could. Plus, you can hose it down and then wash it in bleach or something if it needs to be really clean. This is less than trivial when elevated water tanks (lots of cities have them) need inspection. There isn’t much to see (thankfully) in one of those. Recently, what with the focus on national security and the like, various government agencies are using ROVs to look at boat hulls, ports, docks and the like. Not very glamorous and hardly as visible as airport screeners, but necessary nonetheless.

I do some work with SAR (Search And Rescue) groups, although by the time I get called it is almost always a search, there is very little hope of “rescue” left. Lots of times it is just covering territory, another place that won’t have to be examined again. Or it involves places where real divers can’t or are very reluctant to go. Sometimes it gets used to “fly” a grappling hook underwater so the body (or other stuff) can be hauled up by a line.

Because it is mechanical, an ROV can often go places that would be toxic or otherwise hazardous to human divers. One of the places the VideoRay has been is in the Arizona in Pearl Harbor. I think they have pictures at www.videoray.com.

I got interested in SCUBA stuff through sort of a back door. I’ve been exploring caves for some time, mostly up in Virginia and West Virginia. I’ve since moved to Florida, and as luck would have it, one of my caving friends has taken up cave diving and comes down to Florida fairly often. It wasn’t very long before he had me out on the Suwannee River. One thing led to another and now I’m taking classes in SCUBA equipment repair. Come February I will be one of the few (only) certified repair technicians who has never done a dive. Why don’t I dive? I’ve got this really rare nerve disease (don’t worry, it isn’t catching) that currently makes it hard for me to walk or talk. Unlike a broken bone where things get better, surprises for me aren’t that nice, and I don’t think underwater is a really good place to find that you can’t move your arm anymore.

I’ve talked with one cave diver who considers ROVs to be ATVs in a cave – Always Tangled Vehicles. ROVs really, really suck in caves. It seems the tether has its own mind, and it wants to get tangled any way and as often as it can. I can still run around and look at the bottoms of rivers and stuff for cave entrances though. As the thing runs off of only 48VDC, I am currently working on running it from my kayak. (It only draws 300W max.)

Anyhow, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Any thoughts would be welcome, though.
 
On the Bismark program in December the chief engineer had designed a continous fiber optic feed tether. They could drive the vehicle through the ship and out the other side then back to the host sub and cut the line. Which leaves the tether remains behind. That way they save the ROV, can go where no other ROV would dare, there is no chance of a snag because the line continually feeds, and at the same time they don't care about turning around and returning along the same path. Really clever I thought.

It's really too bad you can't dive, nothing like the real thing. However, with all those gadgets it sure seems like the next best thing!
 
I believe that an ROV still holds the world record for the deepest cave dive (Fontaine de Vacleuse, France). Details are in Martyn Farr's book "The Darkness Beckon's". A ROV was used (with divers present) during one of the Doux de Coly expeditions. I've been thinking about making some sort of ROV for a cave entrance with a restriction that often needs digging out 60 ft (almost vertical) from the surface. A quick look with a camera would serve to see if it needed work rather than getting geared up for a dive late on a Friday night. We trialed a Remote Operated Video - i.e. a video camera in a homemade water proof box - which demonstrated that the method had promise except that we couldn't steer it or see the footage in real time.

Duncan
 
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

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