Underwater construction robot for rubble leveling on the seabed for port construction

Abstract

This research develops an underwater construction robot to level rubbles on the seabed for port construction. The rubble leveling is carried out by an underwater robot equipped with imaging sonars and underwater cameras, LBL and gyroscope sensors. A virtual reality system is developed to visualize the robot's figure and the topography over the working environment; hence, the robot is virtually tele-operated by an operator. This paper presents the robot's system and control, and it describes the working process of the rubble leveling carried out by the robot. In addition, the performance of the robot is demonstrated through the experimental results in subsea. The working speed of the robot is faster than that of a human diver, and the robot can work longer than the diver who can work for a limited time to prevent submarine sickness. The robot is expected to have much higher efficiency in deep water where a human diver is unable to work. © 2014 Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems (ICROS).