Mitsubishi Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Masahiro Fujiwara

Kyoichi Yoshioka

Shinichi Murakawa

Kiyoshi Tachibana

Tomio Aoyama

An improved position detecting apparatus for detecting the position of an underwater moving body loaded with an inspecting device is provided. The apparatus is such that it makes it possible to perform inspection of a structure in water quickly, reliably and with high precision. The improvements reside in that the apparatus comprises a light source and a corner cube mounted on the underwater moving body in combination to serve as a target, a follower device, which includes a visual sensor for catching light emitted from the light source, for automatically following the target, an underwater argon laser length measuring instrument for measuring a distance between a length measuring head integrated with the visual sensor and the corner cube, and a detector device for detecting the position of the underwater moving body on the basis of an azimuth angle of the target obtained by the follower device, a reference of one side of a triangle and the measured distance.

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Takasago, Japan

Masahiro Fujiwara