  Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are becoming increasingly important for
different types of industrial applications. The generally high cost of (AUVs)
restricts the access to them and therefore advances in research and
technological development. However, recent advances have led to lower cost
commercially available Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), which present a
platform that can be enhanced to enable a high degree of autonomy, similar to
that of a high-end (AUV). In this article, we present how a low-cost
commercial-off-the-shelf (ROV) can be used as a foundation for developing
versatile and affordable (AUVs). We introduce the required hardware
modifications to obtain a system capable of autonomous operations as well as
the necessary software modules. Additionally, we present a set of use cases
exhibiting the versatility of the developed platform for intervention and
mapping tasks.
