Underwater Robots

This book deals with the state of the art in underwater robotics experiments of dynamic control of an underwater vehicle. The author presents experimental results on motion control and fault tolerance to thrusters’ faults with the autonomous vehicle ODIN. This second substantially improved and expanded edition new features are presented dealing with fault-tolerant control and coordinated control of autonomous underwater vehicles.

UNDERWATER ROBOTICS: Science, Design & Fabrication is written for advanced high school classes or college and university entry-level courses. Each chapter begins with ¿Stories From Real Life,¿ a true scenario that sets the stage for the ocean science, physics, math, electronics, and engineering concepts that follow. One chapter features step-by-step plans for building SeaMATE, a basic shallow-diving ROV. There¿s also a ¿Going Deeper¿ chapter that discusses considerations and modifications for deeper-diving vehicles.

Visual Perception and Control of Underwater Robots covers theories and applications from aquatic visual perception and underwater robotics. Within the framework of visual perception for underwater operations, image restoration, binocular measurement, and object detection are addressed. More specifically, the book includes adversarial critic learning for visual restoration, NSGA-II-based calibration for binocular measurement, prior knowledge refinement for object detection, analysis of temporal detection performance, as well as the effect of the aquatic data domain on object detection. With the aid of visual perception technologies, two up-to-date underwater robot systems are demonstrated. The first system focuses on underwater robotic operation for the task of object collection in the sea. The second is an untethered biomimetic robotic fish with a camera stabilizer, its control methods based on visual tracking. The authors provide a self-contained and comprehensive guide to understand underwater visual perception and control. Bridging the gap between theory and practice in underwater vision, the book features implementable algorithms, numerical examples, and tests, where codes are publicly available. Additionally, the mainstream technologies covered in the book include deep learning, adversarial learning, evolutionary computation, robust control, and underwater bionics. Researchers, senior undergraduate and graduate students, and engineers dealing with underwater visual perception and control will benefit from this work.

This book provides a comprehensive coverage on robot fish including design, modeling and optimization, control, autonomous control and applications. It gathers contributions by the leading researchers in the area. Readers will find the book very useful for designing and building robot fish, not only in theory but also in practice. Moreover, the book discusses various important issues for future research and development, including design methodology, control methodology, and autonomous control strategy. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of robotics, ocean engineering and related areas.

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.

A classic in underwater robotics. One of the first volumes in the “Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics” series, it has been a bestseller through the previous three editions. Fifteen years after the publication of the first edition, the fourth edition comes to print. The book addresses the main control aspects in underwater manipulation tasks. With respect to the third edition, it has been revised, extended and some concepts better clustered. The mathematical model with significant impact on the control strategy is discussed. The problem of controlling a 6-degrees-of-freedoms autonomous underwater vehicle is investigated and a survey of fault detection/tolerant strategies for unmanned underwater vehicles is provided. Inverse kinematics, dynamic and interaction control for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems are then discussed. The code used to generate most of the numerical simulations is made available and briefly discussed.

Robots can be sent to the most extreme environments in the world. This book takes readers on a deep-sea dive to find out all about underwater robots. Readers will learn about the history of robot technology, as well as the latest uses for underwater robots. The accessible language describes how robots work, while color photographs bring readers into the underwater environments where some robots do their job. What’s the future of underwater robots? What can we find out by using them? This book answers these questions and many more, as readers follow robots under the sea.

Robots can be sent to the most extreme environments in the world. This book takes readers on a deep-sea dive to find out all about underwater robots. Readers will learn about the history of robot technology, as well as the latest uses for underwater robots. The accessible language describes how robots work, while color photographs bring readers into the underwater environments where some robots do their job. What’s the future of underwater robots? What can we find out by using them? This book answers these questions and many more, as readers follow robots under the sea.