Piloting the BlueROV2 Using an Xbox Controller Over Acoustic Communication via ROS2

Underwater vehicles are typically piloted through wired tethers, which limit range, maneuverability, and deployment flexibility. Acoustic communication offers a promising alternative, but its constraints—low bandwidth, high latency, and packet loss—make real-time control a challenge. This thesis presents the design and implementation of an acoustic control system for the BlueROV2, enabling piloting via underwater acoustic modems within a ROS~2 ecosystem. The system integrates a modular surface control node that maps Xbox controller inputs to thruster commands, a custom ROS~2 middleware (\texttt{rmw\_desert}) bridging DESERT Underwater with ROS~2, and a Python-based bridge for Gazebo interoperability. A Dockerized environment was developed to encapsulate all dependencies, ensuring reproducibility and ease of deployment. The framework was validated through both simulation and a preliminary water test with two software-defined acoustic modems. Results confirmed the feasibility of transmitting control commands acoustically, revealing the expected trade-offs between reliability and latency while demonstrating functional end-to-end operation. The main contributions of this work are the creation of a reproducible acoustic teleoperation stack for BlueROV2 and the validation of its viability in real hardware. These results mark a significant step toward tetherless underwater piloting, laying the groundwork for future in-water integration and robust field deployments.