Heading Control of URI-T, an Underwater Cable Burying ROV: Theory and Sea Trial Verification

When burying underwater cables using robots, heading control is one of the key functions for the robots to improve task efficiency. This paper addresses the heading control issue for URI-T, an ROV for underwater construction tasks, including the burial and maintenance of cables or small diameter pipelines. Through modeling and identifying the heading motion of URI-T, the dynamic characteristics and input limitation are analyzed. Based on the identification results, a PD type controller with appropriate input treatment is designed for the heading control of URI-T. The performance of the heading controller was verified in water tank experiments. The field applicability of the proposed controller was also evaluated through the sea trial of URI-T at the East Sea, with a water depth of 500 m. Received 27 January 2019, revised 5 April 2019, accepted 11 April 2019 Corresponding author Gun Rae Cho: +82-54-279-0459, sandman@kiro.re.kr ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8536-4844 It is noted that this paper is revised edition based on proceedings of 13th KROC 2018 in Pyeongchang. c 2019, The Korean Society of Ocean Engineers This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution non-commercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.