Print Email Facebook Twitter Design of a position determination system for a ship’s hull maintenance robot Title Design of a position determination system for a ship’s hull maintenance robot Author Borota, D. Contributor Babuska, R. (mentor) Keviczky, T. (mentor) Noordstrand, A.M. (mentor) De Vet, C.P.M. (mentor) Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Delft Center for Systems and Control (DCSC) Programme Signals & Systems Date 2015-07-17 Abstract Positioning and localization are key topics associated with the control and operation of robotic vehicles. This holds in particular for robots functioning in a challenging environment, such as the ship’s hull maintenance robot developed by Fleet Cleaner. As the industry standard techniques are limited due to constraints imposed by the harbor and ship’s hull as operating area, solving this positioning problem is not trivial. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is: “design a position determination system for a ship’s hull maintenance robot”. The objective is accomplished by completing three phases: conceptual design, embodiment design, and proof of concept. The conceptual design approach focuses on the selection of optimal measuring principles, based on the characteristic constraints and requirements of the system. The solution is found to be a combination of both absolute and relative positioning methods, using the principles of: underwater acoustics, depth sensing, inertial sensing, and wheel encoding. For the embodiment design the implementation parameters for customizing the inertial, depth, and acoustic subsystem to the application are considered. This leads to the proposed set of design choices: a local reference system of acoustic beacons attached to the ship’s hull, where acoustic one-way communication between the robot and beacons provide information of the robot’s absolute position in intervals; using inertial velocity and orientation to compute the relative displacement between intervals; a pressure-based sensor for determining depth. A proof of concept is obtained by combining the sensors into a test platform. The setup, built with some assumptions and concessions, contains the basics of essential methodologies for position estimation. Evaluation is based on measurements obtained from two settings (i.e., a water crate and the 3mE towing tank), both aimed at simulating harbor environment. The basic principles are verified and the design proven to work in a laboratory setting. Based on findings throughout the project, suggestions are formulated for improvement by scaling and integrating components, while adding robustness to the estimation methods. Also further testing in a more controlled and structured way (i.e., using the towing tank cart) is required to quantify the performance. Following up on these recommendations will lead to the realization of the complete full scale positioning system for the ship’s hull maintenance robot. Subject positioningrobotunderwatership's hullharboracoustic transducersinertial sensordata integrationfusionestimationsystem designconceptual designembodimentproof of concept To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b9284bcd-5c13-4454-8ee5-5f2fbf185b32 Embargo date 2020-07-08 Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights (c) 2015 Borota, D. Files PDF mscThesis-Dejan-Borota-1527347.pdf 46.13 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:b9284bcd-5c13-4454-8ee5-5f2fbf185b32/datastream/OBJ/view