ROV Trainer Kit for Education Purposes

This paper presents the Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) trainer or called it as the ROV Trainer for the educational purpose. Many underwater industries are involved in developing underwater robot in order to reduce human works as well as increase productivity, efficiency and monitoring. Therefore, the ROV was designed in order to replace the divers and reduce a risk to a diver itself. However, the major constraints to the ROV designed are understanding and knowledge the fundamental of the ROV design. Therefore, ROV Trainer is designed in order to give a basic knowledge and as a platform to test the control system of the ROV. ROV Trainer was a design based on maneuverability and performance of each component with minimum cost where the size of ROV can be varied based on user needed. The Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC) is used to control the movement of this ROV either as manual control or autonomous control. The experiment carried out from this ROV trainer such as buoyancy test, pressure test, measure thrust and controlling the ROV will be covered in ROV Trainer. This project will give many benefits for educational researcher, school educational kits and also related underwater industries by looking at ROV’s features with the needed minimum cost of implementation

Review on auto-depth control system for an unmanned underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) using intelligent controller

This paper presents a review of auto-depth control system for an Unmanned Underwater Remotely operated Vehicle (ROV), focusing on the Artificial Intelligent Controller Techniques. Specifically, Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) is utilized in auto-depth control system for the ROV. This review covered recently published documents for auto-depth control of an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV). This paper also describes the control issues in UUV especially for the ROV, which has inspired the authors to develop a new technique for auto-depth control of the ROV, called the SIFLC. This technique was the outcome of an investigation and tuning of two parameters, namely the break point and slope for the piecewise linear or slope for the linear approximation. Hardware comparison of the same concepts of ROV design was also discussed. The ROV design is for smallscale, open frame and lower speed. The review on auto-depth control system for ROV, provides insights for readers to design new techniques and algorithms for auto-depth control

Study of the Effect in the Output Membership Function When Tuning a Fuzzy Logic Controller

This paper describes a study of tuning process for fuzzy logic controller (FLC) design. In fuzzy logic controller design, there is no systematic procedure to tune fuzzy logic controller to follow a desired set point. The tuning process of Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLCs) using trial-and-error approach is commonly done until satisfactory results are obtained. This is usually a tedious and time-consuming task but it has been widely employed and has been used in many successful industrial applications. The performance of the system can be analyzed. If the results are not as desired, changes are made either to the number of the fuzzy partitions or the mapping of the membership function and then the system can be tested again. This paper demonstrates a faster tuning process by adjusting the mapping of the membership function to get desired output. Through identifying and analyzing what will be done on adjusting mapping of membership functions by utilizing knowledge from the experts, it will be demonstrated in this paper that the tuning process of FLCs can be easily simplified

Development of Wireless Data Transfer System on Unmanned Underwater Vehicles Application

This paper presents the development of wireless system for data transfer on unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) using Xbee Pro 60mWatt. Nowadays, wireless communication technology has become part of our daily life. However, research in underwater wireless communication has been active to design the methods for wireless data transmission underwater. In this system is very important to transfer data from UUV to vessel/platform or other UUV. The technology of underwater wireless communication can be used such as to detect fish or ship, identify the environment at bottom of sea and transmitting data from sea to land. Throughout this project, a few experiments have been done to develop a wireless system for data transfer from underwater vehicles to Computer based (CB). A transmitter (CB) will send a data to a receiver (UUV) that attached to a UUV (FKE-UTeRGlider). Hardware’s that has been used such as XBee Pro 60mW Antenna and XBee Pro Starter Kit that will function as a transmitter and receiver to transfer data using wireless systems respectively. The microcontroller used in this project is PIC microcontroller that functions as an interface with the computer. Graphical User Interface (GUI) by Visual Basic (VB) software has been used as a way to communicate with the PIC. All the results for data transfer will discuss in this pape

Simulating underwater depth environment condition using lighting system design

The major obstacle faced by the underwater environment system is the extreme loss of color and contrast when submerged to any significant depth whereby the image quality produced is low. The studies can be easily done by developing the prototype that may imitate the underwater environment. In order to develop the prototype, suitable lighting system are used where it act as an imitator for underwater environment with different depth. Next the color option that use for the imitator prototype should be suitable for underwater lighting system. By using both suitable lighting system and color option for the system, this prototype might be able to produce image that can be comparable with the actual environment. The water tank is the best choice as the medium for imitating and it’s attached with the red curtain in order to create the environment without any unwanted lighting source. The underwater flood light is use for the lighting system and creates the scenery of the lighting underwater environment. The brightness of the light can be adjustable by adjusting the input voltage. In order to capture and record the image of the imitated underwater, the underwater camera and recordable receiver display is used. Lastly, since the underwater environment has noise the automatic pump is applied to create the ambient noise. The result shows that the appropriate combination of color and the brightness based on different depth it may produce the precise hue and saturation with the actual environment system

Development of Image Recognition for Underwater Vehicle Applications

This project focuses on development of algorithm for image recognition of images from vision system for underwater vehicle applications. The main objective of this project is to develop algorithm from vision system sensor for Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) applications which have high performance automated detection and monitoring cracks on anchored ship at its port/dock as well as moving ship. It is also expected to recognize biological underwater object to support on deck auto monitoring system. The developed algorithm will be used to recognize relevant underwater object or living thing. This paper will discuss the experimental setup as well as the prior algorithm which will be used for this research. The approach that had been used to imitate the underwater world will be presented as well as related issues on underwater vision technology. This paper also discusses the expected result of this research and potential application of the developed algorithm

Comparison of depth control form surface and bottom set point of an unmanned underwater remotely operated vehicle using PID controller

This paper investigates the depth control of an Unmanned Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) based on ballast tank system using conventional PID controller. The PID Controller is applied to control the depth of the ROV from two different reference points, from the surface and from the seafloor. The concept of ballast tank system selected is piston tank type. Two different sensors are selected, which is pressure sensor for measurement from the surface, and sonar sensor for measurement from the bottom. Control method from both references point are investigated and compared to find out which feedback reference points are more appropriate in different conditions. The implementation phase will be verified through MATLAB Simulink platform. The verified algorithms will then be tested on the actual prototype ROV. And also the prospect of automated the vertical movement of a ROV

Performances Evaluation and Comparison of Two Algorithms for Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooking System (MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Toolbox and FuzzyTECH)

This paper presents an evaluation of performances rice cooking system with using Intelligent Controller that is Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) to meet the special requirements and some limitations of the rice cooking system. A new inference scheme is given to estimate the amount of rice and water to be used, and the temperature will be controlled according to the amount of rice and the time while cooking. The FLC system is designed by using two types of simulation software which are MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Toolbox and FuzzyTECH. The results obtained from the both simulation software are given in this paper. The differences the between both simulation also will be discussed. MATLAB Toolbox gives more specific results compared FuzzyTECHsoftware. The both software meet the special requirements because is not much differ between each other

Underwater Technology Research Group (UTeRG) Glider for Monitoring and Surveillances Applications

This paper describes a design and development of Underwater Glider for Monitoring and surveillances applications. An Underwater Glider is a type of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Underwater gliders are buoyancy-driven device. It can alternately reduce and expand displaced volume to dive or climb through the ocean. It has wings to control its motion from vertical to horizontal at very low power consumption. The motivation of this underwater glider is at its long range and high endurance for certain types of mission. Gliders are designed to slip through the ocean a fraction of meter per second to cover hundreds of meters for weeks. It can be used in commercial and military purpose. The design and development of this underwater glider have hydrodynamic characteristic, stability and buoyancy. The simple Microprocessor PIC is used to control the movement of the glider. There are three major phase in developing this glider which are mechanical design, programming and fabrication. The speed and power consumption of the glider in pool and lake are then measured and analyzed. This glider was tested on three types of differences testing area such as lake, swimming pool and laboratory pool. This paper also shows the performances of glider in term of speed and power consumption of three conditions. This glider is proven suitable for monitoring and surveillances application

Observer based output feedback tuning for underwater remotely operated vehicle based on linear quadratic performance

This paper describes the effectiveness of observer-based output feedback for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) with Linear Quadratic Regulation (LQR) performance. Tuning of observer parameters is crucial for tracking purpose. Prior to tuning facility, the ranges of observer and LQR parameters are obtained via system output cum error. The validation of this technique using unmanned underwater vehicles called Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) modelling helps to improve steady state performance of system response. The ROV modeling is focused for depth control using ROV 1 developed by the Underwater Technology Research Group (UTeRG). The results are showing that this technique improves steady state performances in term of overshoot and settling time of the system response