An autonomous underwater vehicle with a canard rudder for underwater minerals exploration

Abstract

Exploration and mining of natural resources in the region of seabed are needed for lasting economic growth, because an abundance of natural resources, including rare metal, is in Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The cost down of exploration and mining is an important issue for industrialization. It is well known that unmanned and/or autonomous platforms for exploration are effective to reduce operation cost. JAMSTEC has developed a cruising type autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to perform exploration in hydrothermal activity areas up to depth of 3,000 meters since 2011. This specified purpose AUV (5 m long, 2.7 tons in weight) has capability of high maneuverability for eliciting high performance of sonars and is equipped with three sonars: a synthetic aperture sonar (SAS), an interferometry sonar (IFS) and a sub-bottom profiler (SBP). The cruising AUV, named Yumeiruka, is thus has a canard rudder to maintain a fixed posture in horizontal and vertical plane. In March 2013 the 15-days sea trial of the vehicle was carried out in the Sagami Bay and we achieved constant pitch control by using the canard rudder during an altitude change.Index Terms -autonomous underwater vehicle, X-type canard rudder; underwater resources exploration, synthetic aperture sonar; ph sensor.

A Fault-tolerant Steering Prototype for X-rudder Underwater Vehicles

“…For these reasons, X-rudders have been adopted more and more in AUV designs around the world. In the civilian field, JAMSTEC (Yokosuka, Japan) has developed a cruising xAUV that can maintain a fixed posture in the horizontal and vertical plane in order to perform exploration in hydrothermal activity areas [4]. MARIN (city, The Netherlands) [5,6] investigated and promoted the capabilities of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as a tool to conduct 6-DOF free-running maneuvering simulations on a scale physical model equipped with an X-rudder.…”

Current status and prospects of marine renewable energy applied in ocean robots

“…Ocean robots have been regarded as one of the most important tools for understanding and exploring ocean, especially in those dangerous and inaccessible places (for instance, harsh or underwater high‐pressure environment). At present, ocean robots have been successfully applied in many marine areas, such as submarine resource exploitation (manganese nodule, hydrothermal deposits, etc), hydrographic survey, pipeline inspection, ocean observation, military applications (mine clearance, anti‐submarine warfare, etc), and so on. This paper summarizes the application of MRE in ocean robots and presents the important significance of improving ocean robots' endurance by introducing MRE, which will provide a reference for MRE development and ocean robot construction in future research related to marine engineering technology.…”

Desenvolvimento de veículos autônomos submarinos para aplicações oceanográficas.

“…Estudos para arqueologia [71], [30], [72] Inspeção visual de estruturas [73], [43], [74], [75], [76] Veículos de intervenção [77], [78], [79], [80], [46] Veículos para competições [81] Plataformas de desenvolvimento [82], [83], [84], [85], [86], [35] Assistência à mergulhadores [87] sensores de parâmetros da água. [94], [49], [95], [50], [46], [96], [69], [97], [31], [98], [54], [55], [32], [81], [89], [23], [33], [99], [51], [60], [93], [22], [100], [39], [101], [102], [70], <...>…”

“…Sidescan [26], [23], [107], [102], [60], [58], [108] Batimetria [93], [107], [109], [79], [22], [40], [24], [73], [51], [105], [26], [88], [85], [102], [110], [111] Multi-feixe [26], [87], [49], [112], [50], [100], [63], [23], [71], [58], [108] Sub-bottom Profilers [81], [90], [94], [58] aplicações acima de 1000m, sendo o limite mais comum 3000m de profundidade. Um dos trabalhos apresenta o desenvolvimento de um veículo para profundidade de 11000m, capaz de suportar as maiores profundidades encontradas nos oceanos.…”

“…100m [76], [86], [81], [113], [22], [43], [83], [59] 200m [98], [75], [70], [114], [74], [71], [45] 500m [107], [115], [53], [110] 1000m [49], [73] 2000m [109], [100] 3000m [93], [91], [94], [97], [55], [51], [61], [54], [46] 3500m [90] 4000m [40] 6000m [89], [84] 11000m [42]…”