For this week's assignment, I chose the unmanned underwater vehicle called the Crabster CR200. It is a remotely operated vessel that was inspired by the the natural design of lobsters and crabs with a primary objective of being able to steady itself for deep seafloor explorations. Past vessels that wanted to explore the ocean floor were ill-equipped to brace and counter the harsh undercurrents and turbulent deep-water tides, as such, out of this necessity, Crabster CR200 was born.
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| Crabster CR200 |
The remote control unit that operates the Crabster is housed at the surface level within a 20 ft sea container. Within the sea container, it contains a lot of equipment that is meant for a team of four operators to use. You have the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and also sonar/sensor operator - it almost looks like an aircraft cockpit!
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| Multi-Program Driven |
The sea container consists of seven computers, nine LCD monitors, four joysticks, and power supply. The hardware is powered on a Intel Quad Core i7 CPU, 8 GB main memory, and Gigabit Ethernet interface. The agent program is based on Linux Software but there are also many commercial off the shelf (COTS) software that is used such as the Navigation Program and Video Program which are all integrated via the Agent Program.
The data presentation of the Crabster is mostly traditional 2D views and live-video views from the pilot view. However, the pilot video does have an interface similar to a heads-up display found (shows tide/current speed, pitch/roll/heading and speed) on most modern aircrafts which helps, from a human factors perspective, assimilate information much more easily. There is also a 3D-view of the Crabster itself that is made possible by the on-board sensors relaying positional and other environmental state information back to the remote control station which then is simulate through the 3-D viewer program to create a dashboard view of all critical information of the vessel itself.
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| 3D Dashboard View |
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| Pilot HUD view |
For future improvements, it must be stated that the portability of the control station needs to be investigated to ensure its footprint can be made more concise. It is currently cumbersome to transport and requires lifts and transportation capable to move a sea-container. That said, I do believe the 4 personnel team required to operate the Crabster CR200 is a good design choice as it allows each specialist to focus on their task at hand to optimize results and share the overall workload of such a complex unmanned underwater vehicle.
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| Remote Control Station |
Hope you enjoyed my research for this week - cheers!
References
IEEE Spectrum. (2014, July 30). IEEE Spectrum.
Retrieved from Huge Six-Legged Robot Crabster Goes Swimming:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/six-legged-underwater-robot-crabster
Kim, B., Shim, H., Yoo, S.-Y., Jun, B.-H., Park,
S.-W., & Lee, P.-M. (2013). Operating Software for a Multi-legged
Subsea Robot CR200. Retrieved from IEEE Xplore:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6608151
Sea Technology Magazine. (2013, October 13). Hexapod
Robot Crabster CR200 for High Tide, Turbid Water Exploration. Retrieved
from Sea Technology Magazine:
http://www.sea-technology.com/features/2013/1013/6.php
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