Abstract Summary
A remotely operated submersible drilling rig suitable for relatively shallow water projects (up to 200 m water depth) when short target penetrations are required was designed. The system is able to drill with a diameter of up to 113 mm thus allowing the recovery of large-diameter samples. The operations are fully instrumented: the positioning, drilling parameters, and the digital camera image are displayed in real-time, allowing the operator to take decisions during positioning and drilling. The drilling parameters of a representative test in a heterogeneous seabed and some laboratory results on samples recovered are presented in this paper.
