Study on path tracking approach for underwater mining robot

Abstract

In South Korea, a self-propelled mining robot, named MineRo, was developed in 2007. In 2010, the shallow water test in around 100m depth has been executed for the purpose of evaluation of driving performance. This paper introduces the path tracking approach based on the track velocity control and underwater navigation. The path tracking algorithm is to revise the general follow-the-carrot method in which the target orientation is chosen the orientation along with the path or the orientation for look-ahead point according to the distance between path and current position of robot. Also for the sharp corner on the path, this approach considers the smooth steering way, because the robot drives on the soft sea-bed. Finally, to verify the effect of the proposed approach, the path tracking tests are executed for the two paths, the straight-line type path and lane-change type path.