Autonomous robots may soon replace divers in the search for small mines on the hulls of ships thanks to a collaboration between the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
For years, the Navy used divers to sweep ship hulls for dangerous devices, but the process could take hours to complete and was not without danger to those undertaking it. MIT, which has been working on an underwater robot called the Navy's Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (HULS) since 2002 to do the job, now has developed new algorithms that improve robot navigation to work autonomously to identify mines, according to researchers there. Bluefin Robotics designed the body of HULS while MIT designed and continues to work on its control system.
MIT researchers have improved the navigation and ability to detect small mines on the hulls of ships for its Autonomous Underwater Hull Inspection Vehicle, pictured here. Small mines can create significant damage to a ship's hull even if they don't threaten the lives of people onboard. (Source: The Office of Naval Research)
MIT's Franz Hover, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and graduate student Brendan Englot, developed the new code for HULS, which allows the robot to swim around a ship's hull and view structures on it, such as propellers and shafts. Ultimately, engineers want to design a system that will allow HULS to detect a 10cm mine attached to the side of a ship. These mines, while small, can create significant damage to a ship, according to the Navy.
Coming up with the new control code was no easy task, according to MIT researchers, who worked on the computational problem for about 10 years because it demands that the robot get a very up close and personal view of such a massive vessel, said Hover, in the press release. "It's not enough to just view it from a safe distance," he said. "The vehicle has to go in and fly through the propellers and the rudders, trying to sweep everything, usually with short-range sensors that have a limited field of view."
Researchers took a two-stage approach to developing the new controls for HULS, first programming the robot to approach a ship from a 10m distance and swimming in a square around it. The distance was safe enough for the robot not to collide with any items on the ship's hull or the hull itself.
Maybe I'm being too literal, but the HAUVs in our nautical robot slideshow http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&doc_id=246206 are by definition autonomous vehicles (the "A" in HAUV), which means they don 't require human interaction. So I still don't get why the Navy wants to reinvent their own version (and, of course, call it by a different name). Unless it's to have their own algorithm?
Your quite welcome. There's a group of students at ITT Tech buidling a mobile robot using a metal detector kit to locate metal objects for their Capstone Project. Sounds interesting and I look forward to their finish product and results.
Possibly adding an inductive sensing coil similar to a proximity sensor or a metal detector could possibly be used with crab seeking underwater robots to detect the mines. Sounds like a good Capstone project for an undergraduate engineeering team to research and implement.
You make a good point. Some years back we were looking at some sensitivity of mines to metalic objects and some navigation devices to direct divers to mines. The biggest problem was the fact that many mines sence approaching metal as a threat or a target and detonate, so we needed to find one that has a very small or no metal signature. I do not know haw these robots can approach a magnetic mine.
Robotics have been used in space exploration, wood manufacturing, and composites defect inspection applications to alleviate endangerment to humans. Why not the last frontier, oceans. Since crabs scour the ocean floors looking for food, making robot replicas to find mines make perfect since.
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. I guess I have a hard time "getting" the thought-process of deviant activity. My mind tends to direct thoughts toward constructive, vs. destructive activities. Guess I'd make a poor CIA counter-terrorist!
@JimT-The Navy's not concerned with previously sunken ships--they worry about currently deployed assets at anchor. Consider Fleet Week in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. A carrier group comes in fairly close to shore. A terrorist with rebreather equipment (no bubbles) could deploy a small limpet mine amongst the propellor/rudder structure. These autonomous robots hopefully can detect this if all other security measures have failed. I imagine that the detection algorithm in typically limited visibility and complex structure is what took 10 years to develop and test.
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