The tint Korean AUV named OKPQ-6000 which can dive up to 6.000 meters depth has been developed by Daewoo Heavy Industries Ltd.(DHI). It has various data acquistion equipments such as video recorder still camera, side scanning sonars, obstacle avoidance ranging sonars, temperature sensor, conductivity sensor, autopilot system and so on. OKPO-6000, which was designed to safely reach the sea bottom of 6.000 meters deep ocean, successfully explored 2,300 meters sea bed in May. 1996 near the " Dok-Do" island in the " East Sea" of Korea. The specifications, system schematic, maneuvering characteristics and some recordings are introduced In this paper.
The Ship and Ocean R&D Institute (SORDI) of OHI has successfully developed an deep sea Autonomous Underwater Vehic1e(AUV) in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Technology Problems (IMTP) of Russia through last three (3) years. Even though pretty many AUVs have been made during last two decades the deep-sea AUVs diving deeper than 6.000 meters water depth are still rare because oceanic region deeper than 6,000 meters has not been much attractive except being used as sea-going route. Presently the United States of America (Steiger, 1994), Russia (Ageev, 1991a), France, Canada, Japan, Italy and China keep their own deep-sea AUV(s). The AUV could be utilized in many ways (Ageev et al. 1991. Ageev 1991b, and Hertog 1992); scientific data measurements. investigation of underwater pollution status, deep-sea mine sourcing, underwater military purposes especially for the shallow water, search for the sunken bodies and so forth. As far as the underwater exploitation is concerned the Remotely Operated Vehicles(ROVs) are also useful tools (Given 1992, and Gallimore et al. 1994 and 19%). A lot of ROVs are being world-widely fabricated and utilized in the sea bottom abling/maintenance, inspection of underwater structures, and scientific purposes.
