In general, a remotely operated vehicle(ROV) operates at deep sea. The control system of ROV is composed of two local loops; the first loop placed on the surface vessel monitors and manipulates the attitude of the ROV using joystick, and the second part on the ROV automatically controls thrusters and acquires positional data. This paper presents a position control simulation of a ROV using an adaptive controller and discusses the control effects of two different conditions. The design of an adaptive control system is obtained by the application of a self-tuning controller with the minimization of an appropriate cost function. The parameters of the control system are estimated by a recursive least square method(RLS). In the simulation, a Runge-Kutta method is used for the numerical integration and the generated outputs are obtained by adding measurement errors. Additionally, this paper discusses the mathematical modelling of a ROV and make a survey of control systems.