Multicooperation of Turtle-inspired amphibious spherical robots.

Area of Science:

• Robotics
• Marine Engineering
• Control Systems

Background:

• Underwater robotics face challenges in achieving coordinated movement, especially in turbid water and confined spaces.
• Multicooperation of amphibious spherical robots (ASRs) with multiple degrees of freedom (MDOF) requires advanced control strategies for effective communication and synchronized movement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an innovative control strategy for modeling and experimental platforms enabling multicooperation of ASRs.
• To enhance the underwater movement accuracy and speed of ASRs through a novel kinematic model and cooperative control.
• To validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy in real-world experimental platforms.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel underwater kinematic model utilizing the unit quaternion (UQ) algorithm for attitude interpolation to achieve MDOF movement.
• Integrated camera acquisition compartments for underwater target recognition and tracking, enabling robots to adjust motion trajectories.
• Implemented a control strategy for multi-robot cooperation and conducted 3-D movement experiments with ASRs.

Main Results:

• The proposed unit quaternion-based kinematic model successfully enabled MDOF underwater movement for ASRs.
• ASRs demonstrated effective underwater target recognition and tracking, leading to coordinated motion adjustments.
• Experimental validation confirmed the effectiveness of the multi-robot cooperation strategy and 3-D underwater movement capabilities.

Conclusions:

• The developed control strategy significantly improves the multicooperation and 3-D movement of ASRs in challenging underwater conditions.
• This research provides a foundation for efficient communication and cooperation among multiple bionic robots, a key area in current robotics research.
• The findings offer valuable insights for the design and control of future autonomous underwater robotic systems.