OROCOS based control software of the new developed MARUM hybrid-ROV for under-ice applications

Abstract

The water column as well as the seafloor in under ice environments (sea ice or glaciers) are increasingly interesting for researchers. Exploring these regions needs new technical equipment, which is able to cope with the challenges arising when entering areas covered by ice. There is no escape route to the surface, caverns within the ice and an unknown sea-floor topography makes impact severely on navigation and communication with the deployed systems is complicated. Additionally, the requirements from the researchers to the systems are high (probe sampling, video coverage, sonar images etc.). The HROV system developed at MARUM intends to deal with these problems by applying a hybrid ROV-AUV approach to a underwater vehicle. Within such a hybrid system, the control architecture has to satisfy the needs of a human operator controlling it in ROV mode and the constraints arising from autonomous operation. Resulting from a close cooperation between the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center and MARUM we present within this paper a control architecture which uses OROCOS/ROCK as framework to implement a system which allows seamless and immediate switching between ROV and AUV mode (e.g. in case of fibre rupture) as well as applying an adaptive fault detection and fault response system.