What are the key technical issues to be solved for the underwater robot？

Underwater robot is a high-tech integration, although the robot body of various materials and related technologies have basically matured, but with the development of the robot to a wide range, large depth, long-range, multi-functional, some key technologies still need to be studied and solved, such as:

(1) Underwater communication problems.

ROV can use cable to carry out information transmission well, but the cable also limits the function of its. The control signal of the cableless robot is currently realized by hydroacoustic communication, and there is a delay in transmission, because the speed of transmission of sound in water is much lower than the speed of light, which makes it difficult to control it in real time. And the transmission distance is limited by carrier frequency and transmit power, the current communication distance is only about 10 kilometers. In addition, acoustic communication is also susceptible to interference caused by multi-path effect, although narrow wave speed can be used, but there are also beam alignment and tracking problems. The United States uses blue-green laser to realize the communication of submarines in the 100m deep underwater, the research and development of laser communication opens up a new way for large-scale communication in the water, but the current blue-green laser is too large, low efficiency, energy consumption, which can not be used for ROV.

(2) Energy issues.

ROV generally do not have energy problems, but if operating in the deep sea, transmission losses increase as the cables grow. Although voltage increases and frequencies increase, insulation and safety issues can occur. For cableless robots, the amount of energy stored by the own supply module is the main factor to limit the scope of their operation, fuel cells can be considered, but at present which isn’t applied in robots, it need further research and development.

(3) Control problems.

The control of cable underwater robot is relatively simple, which can be controlled by the operator through the operator station to realize human-computer interaction control. However, ROV in the water movement has six degrees of freedom, it is a strongly coupled nonlinear system, coupled with the local water flow direction, flow rate are irregular changes, the stiffness of the power positioning control system is difficult to meet the requirements of fixed-point operations, which needs further study. Cable-free underwater vehicles are difficult to achieve real-time control due to information transmission problems, it often require autonomous control or intelligent control. However, because the control object is 6 degrees of freedom, cross-coupling, non-linearity and time-varying are very serious, so its control technology is very complex, and needs further research and development.

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