Underwater Robot with Turtle-like Propulsion
The Robot Safari Exhibition at the London Science Museum has seen the world premiere of the underwater robot U-CAT, a highly manoeuvrable robot turtle. The U-CAT has been designed by the Centre for Biorobotics at Tallin University of Technology, Estonia, as part of the EU Archaeological Robot Systems for the World’s Seas (ARROWS) research project. U-CAT’s propulsion principle is similar to that of sea turtles.
Four independently driven flippers make the robot highly manoeuvrable; it can swim forward and backward, up and down and turn on the spot in all directions.
Manoeuvrability is a useful feature when inspecting confined spaces such as shipwrecks. The robot carries an onboard camera and the video footage can be later used to reconstruct the underwater site.
Three AUVs
Aiming to boost research, the EUR4 million ARROWS project picks up where military security and offshore oil and gas technologies left off by creating underwater exploration vehicles tailored to the needs and expectations of deep-sea archaeologists. Since the project started in September 2012, the 10-partner strong consortium has developed three new ‘Autonomous underwater vehicles’ (AUVs), including U-CAT, a highly manoeuvrable robot inspired by turtles and designed to penetrate shipwrecks. These AUVs and their dedicated components boast tantalising advantages such as reduced size and mission cost, higher versatility, lower weight and more ergonomic designs.
Benedetto Allotta, professor of robotics at the University of Florence, Italy, and ARROWS project coordinator, details the main selling points of the AUV technologies developed by the project team, explains the demonstration process with active participation of archaeologists and discusses the future commercialisation of ARROWS’ brand-new AUVs.
Modular
Two more vehicles have been developed within the framework of ARROWS: The first one is ‘Marine robotic tool for archaeology’ (MARTA), a moderate-cost AUV designed by the University of Florence featuring a modular electromechanical structure. Modular means that the vehicle can quickly — in a matter of minutes — be dismantled and assembled again with different sensor payload configurations (either sonar or optical payload). Battery packs can be replaced very rapidly as well. The vehicle is torpedo-shaped with a smaller diameter (177 mm) than existing, best-selling vehicles and has rather rich navigation sensor equipment in order to cope effectively with the requirements of accurate geo-referencing. The sensor payload includes two digital cameras and a forward-looking discovery sonar. However, other payload modules can easily be designed and deployed.
The other AUV is the A-Sized vehicle designed by Edgelab SRL, an Italian SME based in La Spezia. Edgelab’s vehicle is torpedo-shaped as well, with a diameter even smaller than that of MARTA (150mm). Edgelab’s approach consists in developing a really cheap, ‘sexy’ and easily deployable vehicle albeit with reduced performance. The vehicle weight is in the range of 15kg, making its logistics really simple. This vehicle represents a very interesting low-cost opportunity, not only for archaeologists but also for scientists.
