Assisting the teleoperation of an unmanned underwater vehicle using a synthetic subsea scenario

Virtual reality (VR) systems serve as a tool for users to become immersed in a virtual world, navigate through it, and interact with the synthetic objects in real time. Successful applications of VR can be found in many fields outside entertainment ranging from science and engineering to education. In this paper, we present our research work on using a synthetic subsea scenario to assist the navigation of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) in and around an offshore installation. Our approach takes the ROVs position and orientation data from a sonar-based underwater positioning unit and generates a 3-D synthetic subsea navigation scenario that is based on a geometrical model of the offshore installation. It incorporates the "ROV safety domain'' concept to ensure that the synthetic subsea scenario conveys sufficient accuracy for ROV navigation. Our research results have positively demonstrated the feasibility of assisting ROV navigation using a synthetic subsea scenario in combination with the ROV safety domain.