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An AUV Based Experimental System For The Underwater Technology Education
An AUV Based Experimental System For The Underwater Technology Education
An AUV Based Experimental System For The Underwater Technology Education
of the sensing and actuation is at most lHz this time, the timing is
controlled by the RT-task mentioned later. An electric compass
TCM2 is used to detect the heading angle and roll, pitch. I was
afraid that the magnet compass is affected by the thruster or
inner electric current, but at present, it doesn't matter. Each
device like electric compass has its own PIC and all serial
communication line is multi-dropped using 12C through the Ul-ut Sound
communication interface PIC. The 6 underwater connector are
attached for ultrasound transducers, thrusters, power supply and
ethernet. The magnet switch is used for power on and off of 2 DC-
DC, which corresponds to 12V for thruster and 5V for computers.
The system generates maximum 4 PWM signals for the propeller
speed control with motor driver ICs. As we mounted a wireless
A
CCD camera inside, we can see the underwater image as far as I B
the robot is near water surface. We have just finished the basic
function test in the basin by free swimming. We have not
implemented modern controller, we will try path tracking Fig.4 Conceptual view of basin experiment setup
experiment in the next step..
basket. If the transportation basket is full then the basket
I. INTRODUCTION releases its weight to go up to the surface where the cellection
vessel is waiting for baskets. As the underwater robots are
The underwater multi-agent technology has great potential staying for long period around the seabed, the power supply
for the various activities in the near future ocean development station is needed. The suggested method before now for the
or investigation c,2,3,4]. Fig.o 1 illustrates an imaginary picture development of deepsea manganese nodules consists of a very
of deep ocean construction as one example of those activities, large vessel with massive riser pipe and an underwater suction
Because we can utilize buoyancy force actively to reduce the unit to absorb the mineral resources from the bottom to the
self-weight of the structural members in the water and the vessel[8]. The design of the riser system is complicated
external force is relatively small compared with near free because of its flexiblity so the total cost of the system is
surface in the deep water, there is a new possibility of expensive. The multi agent method may be one of the
underwater structure to be developed if only we can develop improved plans because of its general versatility and system
the method of automated underwater construction using many flexibility.
autonomous underwater robots[5,6]. Considering about the AUV control algorithm design
Fig.2 shows the schematic view of underwater monitoring procedures, it is important for the designer to synthesize the
system now we are planning to develop as another possibility balance between autonomy and cooperation in the AUV
of underwater multi-agent. We are aiming to realize the character or intelligence. To determine which characteristic is
continuous monitoring system in time and space where many more important depends on the mission. For example, the
compact AUV groups distributed in target coastal sea area priority is on the autonomy side for the Fig.2 case because the
from the surface to the bottom. The target monitoring area is interactive situation is limited for communication between
sliced planar hierarchically toward the depth as monitoring each AUV. On the other hand, in the Fig. 1 case, the priority is
layers, and a group of AUV arranged on each layer tracks the on the cooperation side because the interaction is not only on
given trajectory and gathers various environmental information the communication but also dynamical coupling exists in this
continuously communicating each other in the layer or between case. And also, in Fig.3 case, we need to implement a kind of
other layers. There are also autonomous moving buoys on the emergent characteristic to optimize the total behavior of the
surface that have the role not only of the observation around team. To extract and solve such problems in the development
surface environment but also of the communication interfaces of AUV multi-agent technologies, we need to enlarge
between underwater groups and facilities on land, satellites etc. educational opportunities for students of dealing with various
The target area also marked off one lot from another and each basic AUV technologies by their own hands. So we should
division has an AUV group communicating other groups to build up a series of basin experiment system which we can
organize information networks from land base through free experience various problems arising from the real system to
surface to the bottom of the sea. We call this system as verify the result of simulated algorithms. The conceptual
PADOMS abbreviating Portable and Autonomous Distributed sketch of the experimental system is shown in Fig.4. The
Ocean Monitoring System[7]. It will improve the defects of the essential parts of the experimental system are AUV platforms,
present ocean monitoring method, that is, the monitoring ultrasound ranging system and ultrasound data communication
depends on the spotted water sampling so that continuous in- system. The AUV platforms consist of a floating commucation
situ monitoring is difficult. interface between underwater robots and land base PC, and
Fig.3 shows a concept of development of deepsea mineral underwater tiny AUV test beds. In this paper I will introduce
resources like manganese nodules by underwater multi agent two types of AUV test-bed platforms and ultrasound systems
robots. Each distributed robot has manipulators to grab the now we are developing. Although the underwater multi-agent
nodules and they gather the nodules into atransportation system will include not only the AUVs but also other non-
vehicle type robotic agents, in this research we restricted our
experimental task using AUV only. More complicated task that
needs non-vehicle type underwater robot is the next step of this
research.
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real. Although the glass pressure hull is not so expensive and 15cm propeller is about 0.8kt.
-
widely used for ocean research, the 6500m depth spec is too W eetdteP14cmue ytmadtemi
high for our purpose and it is not necessarily convenient for the CPU is NSGeode300MHz with 64M RAM and a 20G HDD.
non- professional users like students to handle it, The PCMCIA card for wireless LAN and A/D, D/A cards are
equipped. The wireless LAN is used for the remote login _
access from an external computer for program download or _______
sensor data acquisition. One of the important functions of the
large AUV is the interface function between the land based
computer and the underwater multi-agents so the wireless LAN
ismpotan asthe communication device. The attitude sensorUSGOE30
is TCM2 which senses the heading, pitch, roll angles and the I
sensing data is collected by RS232(COM1). The power.
consumption of PC system is less than 25W, and we estimate
each 4 thrustersm- averaged power consumption is about 30W t wbf Mt m
without disturbance like current, so that we can continue one i
experiment about 4 to 6 hours. It may be enough at this stage, I I
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time.
The ultrasound ranging/LBL module is separated from the
main pressure hull to avoid PWM noise generated by the motor Fig. 14 Hardware system configuration of larger AUV
drivers inside. Because the glass pressure hull is transparent,
we used a set of an infrared LED and a phototransistor for the
infrared serial data communication between main PC in the
main hull and PICs for ultrasound ranging module outside.
Generally speaking, the underwater electrical connector cost is
very high, so we designed to limit the use of the connector only
for the power transmission. We reduced the use of underwater
connector by using the infrared data communication. Once the
watertight seal is equipped we don't want to open the hull
easily so the main power switch is controlled externally using
photo sensors because the magnet switch could not work
because the glass wall was too thick.