Authors:

Sijie Huang

Date Created:

Not specified

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Professor:

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About Paper:

Warming ocean conditions are accelerating the melting of polar ice shelves and driving global sea level rise. However, understanding the processes beneath these ice shelves remains a major challenge due to the inaccessibility and hazards of deep, confined sub-ice environments. This project addresses that gap through the development of a compact, multimodal underwater robot capable of operating in three modes: drifter, glider, and thruster. The long-term vision is to deploy a swarm of these vehicles from a mothership to enable distributed sensing in previously unreachable regions. The robot features a linear rail ball screw system for internal mass shifting to control pitch, a rotating gear mechanism for roll control via battery and electronics reorientation, and a tunable rudder for yaw control and directional stability. A foldable wing structure enables efficient forward motion in glider mode, while a soft ballast pouch allows real-time buoyancy adjustment for vertical sawtooth trajectories and seamless mode switching. Performance is evaluated through the robot's ability to dive, surface, pitch, roll, yaw, drift, glide, and propel. Integrated sensors measure underwater pressure, temperature, visual feedback, and proprioception via an inertial measurement unit. Data from test deployments will inform future improvements in mechanical design, locomotion transitions, and control strategies. This work highlights the feasibility of deploying small, low-cost underwater robots for scalable and safe sub-ice exploration. It offers a promising tool for monitoring climate- driven changes in polar environments, contributing to a deeper understanding of ocean-ice interactions under rapidly changing global conditions. Keywords: Underwater Robot (UR); Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs); Robotics; Multimodal Locomotion; Ocean Monitoring

Source:

Purdue University / 2025

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Sijie Huang