Underwater Robots

by Junku Yuh (Editor), Tamaki Ura (Editor), George A. Bekey (Editor)

Overview

All life came from sea but all robots were born on land. The vast majority of both industrial and mobile robots operate on land, since the technology to allow them to operate in and under the ocean has only become available in recent years. A number of complex issues due to the unstructured, hazardous undersea environment, makes it difficult to travel in the ocean while today's technologies allow humans to land on the moon and robots to travel to Mars . . Clearly, the obstacles to allowing robots to operate in a saline, aqueous, and pressurized environment are formidable. Mobile robots operating on land work under nearly constant atmospheric pressure; their legs (or wheels or tracks) can operate on a firm footing; their bearings are not subjected to moisture and corrosion; they can use simple visual sensing and be observed by their creators working in simple environments. In contrast, consider the environment where undersea robots must operate. The pressure they are subjected to can be enormous, thus requiring extremely rugged designs. The deep oceans range between 19,000 to 36,000 ft. At a mere 33-foot depth, the pressure will be twice the normal one atmosphere pressure of 29. 4 psi. The chemical environment of the sea is highly corrosive, thus requiring the use of special materials. Lubrication of moving parts in water is also difficult, and may require special sealed, waterproof joints.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780792397540
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	07/31/1996
Edition description:	Reprinted from AUTONOMOUS ROBOTS, 3:2-3, 1996
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	7.99(w) x 10.87(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

Case-Based Path Planning for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.- A Terrain-Covering Algorithm for an AUV.- Three-Dimensional Shastic Modeling Using Sonar Sensing for Undersea Robotics.- Seafloor Map Generation for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Navigation.- Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Hybrid Control of Mission and Motion.- Experimental Study on a Learning Control System with Bound Estimation for Underwater Robots.- Experimental Comparison of PID vs. PID Plus Nonlinear Controller for Subsea Robots.- Experiments in the Coordinated Control of an Underwater Arm/Vehicle System.- Motion Planning and Contact Control for a Tele-Assisted Hydraulic Underwater Robot.- A Computational Framework for Simulation of Underwater Robotic Vehicle Systems.- A Dynamic Model of an Underwater Vehicle with a Robotic Manipulator using Kane’s Method.- Development of an Autonomous Underwater Robot “Twin-Burger” for Testing Intelligent Behaviors in Realistic Environments.- OTTER: The Design and Development of an Intelligent Underwater Robot.

Editorial Reviews

‘This is a valuable reference book for anyone interested in, or researching into, Underwater Robotics. The papers are well written and do not use excessive amounts of technical jargon, thus being accessible to the reader with a firm understanding of control engineering and mathematics.'
Sensor Review, 19:3 (1999)

From the Publisher

Thirteen invited papers addressing the technical issues involved in making underwater robotics feasible and practical. Some of the difficulties presented to the researchers involve the enormous pressure that the ocean imposes, its corrosive chemical environment, visibility, and navigation. The contributors consider these obstacles with discussions that outline research in three dimensional stochastic modeling using sonar sensing, map generation, experiments in coordinated control of an underwater arm/vehicle system, motion planning and contact control for a tele-assisted hydraulic underwater robot, and the development of intelligent underwater robots. The papers were originally published as a special issue of Autonomous Robots, v.3, nos.2-3. Includes graphs, equations, and some imaging photographs (black and white, and color). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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