• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.178-188
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• 2019

When burying underwater cables using robots, heading control is one of the key functions for the robots to improve task efficiency. This paper addresses the heading control issue for URI-T, an ROV for underwater construction tasks, including the burial and maintenance of cables or small diameter pipelines. Through modeling and identifying the heading motion of URI-T, the dynamic characteristics and input limitation are analyzed. Based on the identification results, a PD type controller with appropriate input treatment is designed for the heading control of URI-T. The performance of the heading controller was verified in water tank experiments. The field applicability of the proposed controller was also evaluated through the sea trial of URI-T at the East Sea, with a water depth of 500 m.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.23-28
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• 2019

A track type underwater construction robot(URI-R) which can trench on seabed is being developed by Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology. During the underwater trenching work, the robot is exposed high intensive noise and vibration so the underwater localization signal may not be obtained properly by the acoustic tracking system. Therefore it is necessary to research about continuous localization even though the measured position signal comes in intermittently. In this paper, the experiments were carried out on land to simulated the underwater operating environment characteristics. To estimate its position, inertial navigation system and global navigation satellite system are used. The effects of the period variation while localizing is investigated by the experiments, and the application for URI-R is proposed.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.39-45
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• 2012

Underwater robots are generally used for the construction of seabed structures, deep-sea ecosystem research, ocean energy development, etc. A ducted marine propulsor is widely used for the thruster of an underwater robot because of its collision protection, efficiency increase, cavitation reduction, etc. However, the flow of a ducted propeller is very complex because it involves strong flow interactions between the blade impeller and duct. The present work aimed to design a ducted propeller using 2-D strip theory and CFD analysis. The hydrodynamic forces (i.e. and ) were computed to set the local angle of attack in a spanwise direction of the propeller blade. After the propeller design, performance coefficients such as the thrust, torque, and efficiency were computed to check whether the designed performance was achieved. To validate the present analysis, the thrust was compared with experimental data and good agreement was obtained.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.88-96
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• 2011

Underwater acoustic communication is applicable in various areas, such as ocean data collection, undersea exploration and development, tactical surveillance, etc. Thus, robot control system construction used for underwater-robot like AUV or ROV is essential in these areas. In this paper, we propose the Message Merging MAC($M^2$-MAC) protocol, which is suitable for real time robot control system, considering energy efficiency in important parts of underwater acoustic sensor network constitution. In this proposed MAC protocol, gateway node receives the data from robot nodes according to the time slots that were allotted previously. And messages delivered from base-station are generated to one MAC frame by buffering process. Finally, generated MAC frames are broadcasted to all robot nodes in the cluster. Our suggested MAC protocol can also be hybrid MAC protocol, which is successful blend of contention based and contention-free based protocol through relevant procedure with Maintenance&Sleep (M&S) period, when new nodes join and leave as an orphan. We propose mathematical analysis model concerned about End-to-End delay and energy consumption, which is important factor in constructing real-time robot control system. We also verify the excellence of performance according to comparison of existing MAC protocols with our scheme.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.237-244
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• 2018

When underwater rubble leveling work is carried out by a robot, real-time information on the topography around the robot is required for remote control. If the topographical information with respect to the current position of the robot is displayed as a 3D graphic image, it allows the operator to plan the working schedules and to avoid accidents like rollovers. Up until now, the topographical recognition was conducted by multi-beam sonars, which were only used to assess the quality before and after the work and could not be used to provide real-time information for remote control. This research measures the force delivered to the bucket which presses the mound to determine whether contact is made or not, and the contact position is calculated by reading the cylinder length. A variable bang-bang control algorithm is applied to control the heavy robot arms for the positioning of the bucket. The proposed method allows operators to easily recognize the terrain and intuitively plan the working schedules by showing relatively 3-D gratifications with respect to the robot body. In addition, the operating patterns of a skilled operator are programmed for raking, pushing, moving, and measuring so that they are automatically applied to the underwater rubble leveling work of the robot.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.81.1-81
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• 2002

$\textbullet$ This paper presents a study on the development of a walking robot for an armor-stone work of the breakwater construction. The armor-stone work is putting stones about 0.3 ∼ 2m3 on the surface of the breakwater to prevent it from waving. $\textbullet$ This work has been done manually, and its process plan is uncertain by effects of the weather, wave and tide of sea. Therefore the constructional cost is considered to be wasteful $\textbullet$ Working in underwater as well as on land for human workers causes the accident and caisson disease, so it is necessary to replace the process to be mechanized. $\textbullet$ The basic requirements of the robot for mechanizing are as follows : 1) To have a large...

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.299-308
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• 2011

In this study, we develop a pressure observer to measure the cylinder length of a harbor-construction robot. For the robot control, sensors are required to measure the length of a hydraulic cylinder. The cylinder-position sensor is relatively expensive when the operating environment prohibits external approaches for the measurement of the cylinder position. LVDT or linear scales are usually mounted on the outside of the cylinder, which causes poor durability on a construction site. We use a pressure sensor to indirectly estimate the length of the cylinder. The pressure sensor is mounted inside a hydraulic valve box so that it is protected by the box and easy to waterproof for an underwater robot. By treating oil as a compressible fluid, we derive the nonlinear pressure dynamics as a function of the cylinder position, velocity, and pressure. The recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is applied to identify the dynamic parameters, and the pressure observer estimates the cylinder position through the pressure acting on the head and the rod of the hydraulic cylinder. The position accuracy is relatively low, but it is acceptable for a construction robot that handles large armor stones.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.202-207
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• 2020

A track-type underwater construction robot (URI-R) was developed by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology. Because URI-R uses tracks to move on the seabed, insufficient ground strength may hinder its movement. For smooth operation of URI-R on the seabed, it is important to determine the geotechnical properties of the seabed. To determine these properties, standard penetration test (SPT), cone penetration test (CPT), and sampling are used on land. However, these tests cannot be applied on the seabed due to a high cost owing to the vessel, crane, sampler, and analysis time. To overcome these problems, a free fall cone penetration tester (FFCPT) is being developed. The FFCPT is a device that acquires the geotechnical properties during impact/penetration/finish phases by free fall in water. Depth information is crucial during soil data acquisition. As the FFCPT cannot measure the penetration depth directly, it is estimated indirectly using acceleration. The estimated penetration depth was verified by results of real tests conducted on land.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.161-167
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• 2019

In this paper, the performance verification of an around-view sonar and an excavation depth measuring sonar applicable to track-based ROVs (Remotely Operated underwater Vehicles) for heavy duty work is studied. For the performance verification, an experiment is carried out in a water tank and at sea by attaching the around-view sonar and the excavation depth measuring sonar for a heavy work ROV. In the case of the around-view sonar, image sonars are mounted on ROV in four directions (front, back, left and right) and in the case of the excavation depth measuring sonar, the same kind of MBES (Multi Beam Echo Sounder) is mounted on the front of the ROV. The result of an operation test of the ROV equipped with these sonars shows that the sonar systems are rarely affected by high turbidity due to sedimentation during the operation. In the case of the around-view sonar, it is possible to see rock formation, gravel and sandbank 30 m ahead of the ROV. It is confirmed that the excavation depth can be measured after the ROV has performed the excavation. This experiment demonstrates that the ROV can improve the efficiency of the work by utilizing the around-view sonar and the excavation depth measuring sonar.