Page 68 - The ROV Manual - A User Guide for Remotely Operated Vehicles 2nd edition

56 CHAPTER 3 Design Theory and Standards
3.1 A bit of history
3.1.1 Introduction
The strange thing about history is that it never ends. In the case of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), the history is a short one, but very important nonetheless, especially for the observation- class ROVs.
Two critical groups of people have driven ROV history: (i) dedicated visionaries and (ii) exploi- ters of technology. Those who drove the development of ROVs had a problem to solve and a vision, and they did not give up the quest until success was achieved. There were observation-class vehicles early in this history, but they were far from efficient. In time, however, the technology caught up with the smaller vehicles, and those who waited to exploit this technology have led the pack in fielding smaller, state-of-the-art ROVs.
This section will discuss what an ROV is, address some of the key events in the development of ROV technology, and address the breakthroughs that brought ROVs to maturity.
3.1.2 In the beginning
One way to discuss the historical development of ROVs is to consider them in terms of the cycle of life—from infancy to maturity. Anyone who has raised a child will quickly understand such a categorization. In the beginning the ROV child was “nothing but a problem: Their bottles leaked, their hydraulics failed, sunlight damaged them, they were too noisy and unreliable, were hard to control and needed constant maintenance. Beginning to sound familiar?” (Wernli, 1998).
Some have credited Dimitri Rebikoff with developing the first ROV—the POODLE—in 1953. However, the vehicle was used primarily for archeological research and its impact on ROV history was minimal—but it was a start.
Although entrepreneurs like Rebikoff were making technology breakthroughs, it took the US Navy to take the first real step toward an operational system. The Navy’s problem was the recovery of torpedoes that were lost on the seafloor. Replacing a system that essentially grappled for the tor- pedo, the Navy (under a contract awarded to VARE Industries, Roselle, New Jersey) developed a maneuverable underwater camera system—a mobile underwater vehicle system. The original VARE vehicle, the XN-3, was delivered to the Naval Ordnance Test Station in Pasadena, California, in 1961. This design eventually became the Cable-controlled Underwater Research Vehicle (CURV).
The Navy’s CURV (and its successor—CURV III) made national headlines twice:
• The CURV retrieved a lost atomic bomb off the coast of Palomares, Spain, in 1966, from
2850 ft (869 m) of water, even though working beyond its maximum depth. The CURV’s sister vehicle, CURV II, is shown in Figure 3.1.
• CURV III, which had become a “flyaway” system, was sent on an emergency recovery mission from San Diego to an offshore point, near Cork, Ireland, in 1973. With little air left for the two pilots of the PISCES III manned submersible, which was trapped on the bottom in 1575 ft
(480 m) of water, the CURV III attached a recovery line that successfully pulled the doomed crew to safety.