Design, implementation, and experiment of an underwater robot for effective inspection of underwater structures

Abstract

This paper describes development of a specialized underwater robot for effective inspection of underwater structures. Among various inspection methods of underwater structures, using underwater robots becomes popular. Unfortunately,most underwater robots are not specialized for the inspection purpose. The inspection using traditional method is moreinefficient and more inconvenient than the inspection by divers. To overcome this problem, functions to be specialized inthe underwater inspection is conceived and these functions are implemented in the developed robot. The type of the developed underwater robot is ROV which is possible to communicate large amount of data in real-time and to supply power efficiently. Moreover, the performance of visual sensor is improved, because most inspection methods rely on visual information. Operational algorithms of the robot developed for stable and convenient operations. The performance of the developed robot is verified in a tank. ？ Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.