An Anchoring Capacity Study Focused on a Wheel’s Curvature Geometry for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle with a Traveling Function during Contact with Loose Ground Containing Water

Abstract

The current scallop fishery sector allows many scallops to remain in specified fishing zones, and this process leads to heavy losses in the sector. Scallop fishermen aim to harvest the remaining scallops to reduce their losses. To achieve this, a fisherman must understand the scallop ecology on the seafloor. In our previous study, we proposed a method for measuring scallops using wheeled robots. However, a wheeled robot must be able to resist disturbance from the sea to achieve high measurement accuracy. Strong anchoring of wheels against the seafloor is necessary to resist disturbance. To better understand anchoring performance, we confirmed the wheel anchoring capacity in water-containing sand in an experiment. In this experiment, we towed fixed wheels on water-containing sand and measured the resistance force acting between the wheel and the sand. Afterward, we considered the resistance force as the wheel anchoring capacity on the water-containing sand. The experimental results capture the tendency for the anchoring capacity of sand with/without water to increase with sinkage. The results also demonstrate that the anchoring capacity of water-containing sand is lower than that of non-water-containing sand. However, the results indicate that when the wheels possess lugs, their presence tends to increase the wheels’ anchoring capacity in water.