Wishing to learn more about videoray rov's

[captainslarty]

Hello guys n gals.
Hope someone can advise me here.
I love the potential for this unit, looks superb. I have a couple of questions you can hopefully help me with.

How is up down control accomplished, ie bouyancy ?. is it purely a function of a neutral bouyancy unit and then using the up down thruster, or is there an in built method of controlling bouyancy. ?, from some of the specs I see manual or apparantly fully automatic control ? what are the differences please ?.

Joe

[tom_glebas]

The general buoyancy of the ROV is controlled by adding or removing ballast weights to achieve the desired buoyancy, which is typically nearly neutral.

Vertical control while operating the ROV is accomplished using a vertical thruster controlled from the surface.

On the Explorer, Pro and Deep Blue, there is a an additional mode called AutoDepth. While in this mode, and with the depth control knob centered, the thrust is automatically adjusted to maintain a constant depth (determined by the on-board depth sensor). The depth can be manually adjusted by turning the depth control knob to override AutoDepth and surface or dive. When the depth control knob is re-centered, the AutoDepth takes over again and maintains the new depth.

Does this answer your question?

Tom

[Torin]

Does this mean that there is no pitch control?

[tom_glebas]

Pitch can be induced by a combination of vertical thrust combined with forward or reverse thrust. Pitch can also be controlled statically by applying more ballast fore or aft, or dynamically by attaching horizontal stabilizer type fins to the ROV. There is no specific pitch feature or control input to set a specific pitch angle.

May I ask why you are interested in pitch?

Tom