Autopilot System of Remotely Operated Vehicle Based on Ardupilot

This paper firstly present the autopilot architecture of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), and then introduces the hardware of the underwater ROV. Secondly, it focuses on the autopilot software design of the ROV. Finally, experiments in water are carried out to validate the autopilot functions. The main work of this paper is the re-design and implementation of the proposed autopilot system based on Ardupilot. To maintain the integrity of the original functions of Ardupilot, some new functions are added to design a new flight mode. At the same time, in order to ensure that the original ground control station ‘QGroundControl’ can run simultaneously with the PC control software, modifications of Ardupilot motor library and message parsing methods are formulated. Further more, through the PC control software, it is possible to send control commands such as depth hold and attitude hold to the ROV while the relevant data can be recorded for analysis of control performance.

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