Seahorse ROUV

Seahorse (Hai-Ma or Haima, 海马) remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROUV) is a Chinese ROUV developed by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), and it received state certification in mid 2014.

Seahorse ROUV program begun in 2008 and Professor Ma Xia-Fei (马厦飞) is the program manager, and the general designers of Seahorse ROUV are Professor Lian Lian (连琏) and Professor Ren Ping (任平). Seahorse ROUV is designed to dive to a maximum depth of forty-five hundred meters, and from April 20, 2014 thru April 22, 2014, Seahorse UAV conducted more than seventeen dives in three different phases of sea trial, reaching the maximum designed depth to 4502 meter. After the successful sea trials, state certification is received soon after, and there are plans to develop different models based on the original Seahorse. Seahorse ROUV is designed to perform a variety of research missions and it is equipped with sonar, cameras, mechanical arms, and in addition to research missions, Seahorse ROUV is also capable of performing maintenance work on scientific equipment on seabed. Seahorse utilizes modular design concept to enable different tools to be replaced rapidly based on mission needs while sharing a common chassis. During deployment, Seahorse ROUV is usually carried by Chinese scientific research vessel Ocean 6 (Hai-Yang or Haiyang 6, 海洋6号), though it can also be carried by other Chinese ships equipped to handle ROUVs.