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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 more inefficient and more inconvenient than the inspection by divers. To overcome this problem, functions to be specialized in the 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the development of mine, oil and gas resources exploitation in the ocean, the underwater manipulators become necessary tools. But operation of manipulator is tedious. To reduce its dependence on operator, autonomous manipulation is studied. With the support of the Chinese high technology develop program (the 863 program), we design an underwater 3500m electrical driven manipulator. It is equipped with a unique ultra-sonic probe array and an underwater camera. Autonomous grasping a cylinder using ultra-sonic sensor and vision is studied. The sensor system and strategy of autonomous manipulation are discussed in details. Experiments results demonstrated the manipulator autonomous work ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper remains to introduce the various design and runtime aspects of a state-of-the-art control architecture adopted for the development of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV-150), capable of operating up to a depth of 150 meters to perform sea-bed mapping and collecting oceanographic data. The system control architecture has been presented as an ensemble of both hardware and software modules organized in a well-connected framework for effective operation. Various specifications, harnessing layout and design issues have been discussed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]