ROV(無人潜水機)による海底調査について

抄録

Recently, development of ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) and their related activities have been abruptly advanced. Total numbers of tethered self-propelled ROVs were beyond 1,200 in the world and 120 in Japan. About 96% of ROVs in Japan are small ROVs, depth rated between 100m to 500m. Those small ROVs are easily operated from small fishing boats or small ships of opportunity, therefore chance of observation of sea bottom is provided more easily before few years ago. But those ROVs have also limitations in their speed and periferal gears such as acoustic navigation system. Most of them are very difficult to operate under current condition beyond 1 knot and to determine precise position. We have been developed small ROVs and used for bottom surveys since 1980. This paper describes a examples of bottom surveys using small ROVs their limitation. This paper also describes about an example of deep sea survey by a large deep submergence (3,300m) ROV "DOLPHIN-3K" and it's performance.