Page 72 - The ROV Manual - A User Guide for Remotely Operated Vehicles 2nd edition

60 CHAPTER 3 Design Theory and Standards
FIGURE 3.5
Kaiko—the world’s deepest diving ROV.
small, reliable, observation-class vehicles. These vehicles, which were easily portable when com- pared to their larger offshore ancestors, were produced at a cost that civil organizations and aca- demic institutions could afford.
The MiniRover, developed by Chris Nicholson, was the first real low-cost, observation-type ROV. This was soon followed by Deep Ocean Engineering’s (DOE’s) Phantom vehicles. Benthos (now Teledyne Benthos) eventually picked up the MiniRover line and, along with DOE, cornered the market in areas that included civil engineering, dam and tunnel inspection, police and security operations, fisheries, oceanography, nuclear plant inspection, and many others.
The 1990s saw the ROV industry reach maturity. Testosterone-filled ROVs worked the world’s oceans; no job was too hard or too deep to be completed. The US Navy, now able to buy vehicles off the shelf as needed, turned its eyes toward the next milestone—reaching the 20,000 ft (6279 m) barrier. This was accomplished in 1990, not once, but twice:
• CURV III, operated by Eastport International for the US Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage, reached a depth of 20,105 ft (6128 m).
• The Advanced Tethered Vehicle (ATV), developed by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego, broke the record less than a week later with a record dive to 20,600 ft (6279 m). The ATV was the first deep ocean ROV to incorporate three multi-mode optical fibers and a Kevlar strength member into its 23,000 foot (7012 m) cable.
It did not take long for this record to be not only beaten by Japan but obliterated. Using JAMSTEC’s Kaiko ROV (Figure 3.5), Japan reached the deepest point in the Mariana Trench— 35,791 ft (10,909 m)—a record that can be tied but never exceeded.
The upturn in the offshore oil industry is increasing the requirement for advanced undersea vehicles. Underwater drilling and subsea complexes are now well beyond diver depth, some