10,000m class Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) "KAIKO" was developed to aim at scientific deep area research by Japan Marine Science and Technology Center. "KAIKO" was constructed in 1995 and spent 2 years in pre-practical use training for deep sea operation. In 1997, "KAIKO" obtained mother ship "KAIREI" and started their scientific deep sea observation. With over 100 dives, "KAIKO" proved it's system abilities and got a lot of knowledge about the operation. And now "KAIKO" became a very powerful and stable system. This system keep challenge to make clear the unknown world in deep frontier.
A Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)"KAIKO" (Figure 1) was developed by Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC) is the only ROV which has a ability to approach a depth of l l,000m. Development of "KAIKO" started in 1991, and the construction was completed in 1995. At that time, "KAIKO" was placed in R/V "YOKOSUKA" which is the support vessel for the manned submersible "SHINKAI6500". In 1997, "KAIKO" obtained its own mother ship "KAIREI" and started practical surveys starting in 1998. The ability of vehicles to dive to 11,000m depth area was proven several times at Mariana Trench(Tkakagawa et al,1997). This paper describes the "KAIKO" system and the results of it's under water operations.
The "KAIKO" system consists of, a launcher, a vehicle, cables, cable handling systems and a positioning system(lwai et al, 1992). "KAIKO" is a dual ROV system, with a launcher serving as a wide area survey vehicle linked to the vehicle that functions as a precision multi-sensory imaging and sampling platform. High accurate vehicle position control in research area is necessary for "KAIKO" operation. Location of "KAIKO" is measured by an acoustic positioning system on "KAIREI". Figure 2 shows a image of underwater operation.
