A Robotic Experimental Setup with a Stewart Platform to Emulate Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Systems

Abstract

This study presents an experimental robotic setup with a Stewart platform and a robot manipulator to emulate an underwater vehicle–manipulator system (UVMS). This hardware-based emulator setup consists of a KUKA IIWA14 robotic manipulator mounted on a parallel manipulator, known as Stewart Platform, and a force/torque sensor attached to the end-effector of the robotic arm interacting with a pipe. In this setup, we use realistic underwater vehicle movements either communicated to a system in real-time through 4G routers or recorded in advance in a water tank environment. In addition, we simulate both the water current impact on vehicle movement and dynamic coupling effects between the vehicle and manipulator in a Gazebo-based software simulator and transfer these to the physical robotic experimental setup. Such a complete setup is useful to study the control techniques to be applied on the underwater robotic systems in a dry lab environment and allows us to carry out fast and numerous experiments, circumventing the difficulties with performing similar experiments and data collection with actual underwater vehicles in water tanks. Exemplary controller development studies are carried out for contact management of the UVMS using the experimental setup.

Robotic Non-Destructive Testing

“…This paper demonstrates that moving plankton can be accurately detected and isolated from complex dynamic backgrounds in deep-sea environments. Cetin et al [ 9 ] present an experimental robotic setup with a Stewart platform and a robot manipulator to emulate an underwater vehicle–manipulator system. The hardware-based emulator setup consists of a robotic manipulator mounted on a parallel manipulator, known as a Stewart Platform, and a force–torque sensor attached to the end-effector of the robotic arm interacting with a pipe.…”

Underwater Manipulator Angle Feedback Device System Design

“…The underwater manipulator possesses advantages such as flexible movement and strong anti-interference capabilities, making it the preferred operational tool for underwater robots and a current research focus in underwater intelligent equipment [1][2][3]. Currently, when performing tasks such as gripping and precise collection, underwater manipulators require pre-setting angles followed by multiple simulated learning sessions [4].…”

The Use of Terrestrial and Maritime Autonomous Vehicles in Nonintrusive Object Inspection

“…To make reviewing more efficient, the process also should be automated. One of the possible solutions is to employ self-moving vehicles carrying inspection equipment so that they could autonomously inspect massive objects, crowds, or object flows with the help of nonintrusive control; analyze information; and send alarms to security officers in case of suspicious situation being detected [ 34 ].…”