Development of a dexterous manipulator for underwater cleaning

Abstract

Pollution in the ocean, especially on the seabed, harms marine life. Traditional deep-sea robotic cleaning methods often damage fragile habitats as the multi-joint manipulators often struggle to navigate through confined spaces accurately. Accordingly, this paper introduces a cable-driven continuum manipulator for cleaning up the seabed with higher level of dexterity. The proposed manipulator uses a novel disk design and a cable mechanism, which enables it to sweep smoothly within confined spots, such as coral reefs. The movement of the manipulator is controlled using models that use constantcurvature assumptions, and path optimization is based on inverse kinematics. A lightweight 3D-printed disk system, a strong rigid link, and an end effector are the main components of the fabricated prototype. The results of the simulations and experiments indicate that it is able to travel through complicated paths with acceptable accuracy. The proposed dexterous manipulator has shown the potential to be an effective and an economical way for cleaning ocean floors compared to traditional rigid robot manipulators and/or team of divers.