Soft Robots for Ocean Exploration and Offshore Operations: A Perspective

Abstract

The ocean and human activities related to the sea are under increasing pressure due to climate change, widespread pollution, and growth of the offshore energy sector. Data, in under-sampled regions of the ocean and in the offshore patches where the industrial expansion is taking place, are fundamental to manage successfully a sustainable development and to mitigate climate change. Existing technology cannot cope with the vast and harsh environments that need monitoring and sampling the most. The limiting factors are, among others, the spatial scales of the physical domain, the high pressure, and the strong hydrodynamic perturbations, which require vehicles with a combination of persistent autonomy, augmented efficiency, extreme robustness, and advanced control. In light of the most recent developments in soft robotics technologies, we propose that the use of soft robots may aid in addressing the challenges posed by abyssal and wave-dominated environments. Nevertheless, soft robots also allow for fast and low-cost manufacturing, presenting a new potential problem: marine pollution from ubiquitous soft sampling devices. In this study, the technological and scientific gaps are widely discussed, as they represent the driving factors for the development of soft robotics. Offshore industry supports increasing energy demand and the employment of robots on marine assets is growing. Such expansion needs to be sustained by the knowledge of the oceanic environment, where large remote areas are yet to be explored and adequately sampled. We offer our perspective on the development of sustainable soft systems, indicating the characteristics of the existing soft robots that promote underwater maneuverability, locomotion, and sampling. This perspective encourages an interdisciplinary approach to the design of aquatic soft robots and invites a discussion about the industrial and oceanographic needs that call for their application.

Underwater Soft Robotics: A Review of Bioinspiration in Design, Actuation, Modeling, and Control

“…Such applications include underwater pipe inspection, offshore infrastructure repairs, and condition monitoring. Biological applications include seabed and abyssal exploration, sample gathering from marine environments such as coral reefs, and ecological aquatic phenomena monitoring and data collection [2]. More specifically, repairing and sampling tasks are carried out using underwater vehicle manipulator systems (UVMSs).…”

Design and Characterisation of a Muscle-Mimetic Dielectrophoretic Ratcheting Actuator

“…T HE development of soft machines and robots could enable a new generation of autonomous systems that can operate in unpredictable and unstructured environments [1]- [3]. In turn, this could enable new applications in bio-medicine [4], ecology [5] and virtual reality [6]. However, this vision is currently held back by the limited performance of soft actuators.…”

Kinematic modeling and solution of rigid-flexible and variable-diameter underwater continuous manipulator with load

“…Soft robotics is an emerging research field that develops rapidly in recent years [1] and has a wide application prospect because of its high flexibility and environmental adaptability. Its excellent characteristics make it have great potential in ocean exploration, medical care, service sector, and other fields [2][3][4]. Kinematic modeling of soft robots is challenging because of their characteristics of continuous nonlinear deformation and redundant degrees of freedom.…”