Integral Sliding Mode Control for a Marine Growth Removing ROV with Water Jet Disturbance

Oil & gas operators spend tens of million USD every year on removing marine growth, using manually operated remotely operated vehicles (ROV) with water jets. This study investigates the benefits of automating the ROV used for cleaning by demonstrating a sliding mode control (SMC) algorithm on a reconfigured BlueROV2 with an attached water jet. A nonlinear SMC was designed for the cleaning task. SMC was able to stabilize the orientation of the ROV while following a trajectory in depth. Regular SMC could not stabilize the ROV in front of the member, with the water jet activated. To accommodate for the delay, integral action was added to the SMC (IxSMC) in the surge direction, which stabilized the ROV. From the research presented in this paper, it can be concluded that automation of a marine growth removing ROV can be achieved by applying IxSMC.