A novel self-locking mechanism to connect two ROVs

This paper describes a novel self-locking connection mechanism used to connect two ROVs, a mother (LATIS) and daughter ROV (VideoRay), for subsea operations. The necessity to develop a new topology of connection mechanism arose during an off-shore wreck survey whereby the ROVs were connected by a custom designed hook and ring system. During the trials, despite satisfactory performance of the custom hook, the necessity to develop a new hooking system to facilitate, accelerate and improve safety conditions of the engage and disengage procedure became evident. The interconnecting umbilical cable feed to the daughter ROV's is managed by coiling/uncoiling it around the mother ROV via coordinated motion of the both ROVs. During the coil phase, the umbilical cable is guided into its holding slots by a B shape frame positioned at each corner of the LATIS. The new self-locking mechanism is designed to operate without a power supply or hydraulic drive but instead its geometry and the constituent springs facilitate daughter ROV locking / unlocking with daughter ROV thrusters alone.