Under the OceanRINGS project CRIS developed an improved user interface with touch screen controls and more intuitive 2D and 3D real-time displays that allow better situation awareness and enable ROV pilots with average skills to achieve exceptional results. The 2D display integrates graphical and numerical displays to provide a real-time visualization of navigation data. On the 3D display, the ROV pilot can see the real-time augmented reality visualisation of ROV in the underwater environment.

There are five basic control modes: three in the horizontal plane (headings) and two in vertical plane (heaves). For the horizontal plane the heading mode can be “Follow Course”, “Independant” and “Fixed Point”. In the vertical plane the heave mode can be either “Constant Depth” where the ROV is being kept on the same distance from the sea surface, or “Constant Altitude” where the ROV is following the seabed profile and is keeping the same distance from the seabed. The heading mode describes the heading (direction of the ROV’s cameras) of the ROV considering the course on which the ROV is. For the “Follow Course” mode, the heading and the course will be the same all the time, “Independant” mode means that ROV will keep the same heading no matter what the course is and “Fixed Point” mode describes the mode where, according to the course changes the heading changes to keep a selected point in front of the cameras.