CBL - Campus del Baix Llobregat

Projecte llegit

Títol: Development of and autonomous underwater inspection vehicle for enclosed areas

Estudiants que han llegit aquest projecte:

Director/a: CASANELLA ALONSO, RAMON

Departament: EEL

Títol: Development of and autonomous underwater inspection vehicle for enclosed areas

Data inici oferta: 12-02-2022     Data finalització oferta: 13-03-2022


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    MU DRONS
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: Fora UPC    
 
        Supervisor/a extern: Pau Guasch
        Institució/Empresa: GPA Seabots
        Titulació del Director/a: Industrial Design Engineer
 
Paraules clau:
Autonomous vehicle, USV, GNSS, electronic systems, marine robotics, UGV, underwater positioning
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:

The aim of this project is to contribute in the development of an
autonomous that is able to perform maintenance and inspection
with accurate underwater positioning.

The current solutions in the market, despite being autonomous,
are not intelligent at all. Due to the difficulty of underwater
positioning, these devices usually use dead reckoning techniques.
These techniques lead to inconsistent results and inefficiencies,
mainly caused by the vehicle passing several times by an area
that has been inspected before. Also, current solutions that
operate on enclosed waters are usually tethered, causing a lot of
cable that could potentially become an obstacle to the robot.

This project is aimed as a solution to the previously mentioned
problems. The resulting product must be able to have an accurate
positioning underwater that allows it to adhere to a mission and
maintain the areas that need to be inspected. It will also be
battery powered, which means that no cables will be floating. In
addition to all of that, the device will have a big footprint
which, combined with the accurate positioning, will allow the
vehicle to cover larger areas.

The student will be working full time as part of the team in
charge of the different sub-systems that will conform the
platform. This will allow him to learn about the different
systems of such a platform as well as how a team of engineers is
organized.


 
Overview (resum en anglès):

The aim of this project is to contribute in the development of an autonomous vehicle that is able to perform the maintenance and inspection of large enclosed areas with accurate underwater positioning.

The current solutions in the market, despite being autonomous, are not intelligent at all. Due to the difficulty of underwater positioning, these devices usually use dead reckoning techniques. These techniques lead to inconsistent results and inefficiencies, mainly caused by the vehicle passing several times by an area that has been inspected before. Also, current solutions that operate on enclosed waters are usually tethered, causing a lot of cable that could potentially become an obstacle to the robot and cause severe power losses.

This project aims to demonstrate how the control and navigation techniques that are applied to aerial drones can be adapted as a solution to the previously mentioned problems. The resulting product must be able to have an accurate positioning underwater that allows it to adhere to a mission and maintain the areas that need to be inspected. It will also be battery powered, which means that no cables will be floating. In addition to all of that, the device will have a big footprint which, combined with the accurate positioning, will allow the vehicle to cover larger areas.

After all the different design stages, the project has managed to build and test a working prototype of such a vehicle, which, despite still having some pending upgrades to become a product, manages to perform all the functionalities and solves the main challenges of the problem.

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