The development of the Seahog started in 2010. It is a third generation tetheredunderwater
Remotely-Operated Vehicle currently in development by the Roboticsand Agents Research Lab
(RARL) within the Department of Mechanical Engineeringat the University of Cape Town. The
Seahog was established as an overhaul of twoprevious ROVs developed by various students within
the same lab. The reason forbuilding an in house ROV was to develop a cheap alternative to
commercial offeringsto specifically meet the needs described by the marine biology group at
theUniversity of Cape Town. They wanted an ROV mainly for marine life observationwith a
possibility of small sample collection. The Seahog was started by two master'sdegree students
after it was deemed unfeasible to improve upon the Challenger I orRobin (the names given to the
two previous ROVs). Development of the open-frameROV Seahog was then commenced. This design was
perceived to be a better designcompared with the two previous ROVs' which were torpedo-shaped.
This designchoice offered more in terms of adaptability and maintenance as each
functionalfeature was contained in its own module separate from other modules. For example the
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is housed in its own module so in case of anavigation feedback
breakdown debugging would be easier to perform.Table 1 shows some of the specifications or
characteristics of each of the three ROVsdeveloped by the RARL lab over the years.
