Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Design of Navigation System of Deep-Sea Stratum Drilling Robot
Xingshuang Lin a,b, Jiawang Chen a,b,*, Peihao Zhang a,b, Zixin Weng a,b, Ziqiang Ren a,ba

Ocean College, Zhejiang University, b Hainan Institute, Zhejiang UniversityaZhoushan, Zhejiang, China, b Sanya, Hainan, China

performance of SEAVO to excavate better underwater by equipping withpropulsion unit based on earthworm setae(Nagai, 2017; Tadami, 2017;Tadami, 2018). Zhejiang University have designed a deep-sea stratum
drilling robot which can achieve in-situ detection. This robot achieves
wiggle forward and steering through the mechanism of drill bit, support
unit, steering segment and propulsion unit(Zhang, 2020; Tian, 2021).
These robots have excellent drilling performance. However, when robots
work, they often need guidance from a navigation system to drill into a
specific location in the stratum for exploring or deploying sensors.
Positioning technology and path planning technology are the key
technologies of navigation system of deep-sea stratum drilling robot.
Positioning technology mainly calculates the spatial position of the robot.
Guo(2019) used a series of detectors on the upper part of the ground toacquire micro-seismic records generated by the drill movement, and thenthey used seismic interferometric imaging to perform cross-correlation
superimposed imaging of the seismic records to achieve underwater
positioning of horizontal directional drilling. Ke Yang(2016) proposeda positioning algorithm that can perform measurements of drill attitude
and position accurately. This algorithm was developed based on nonholonomic constraints and steady-state component constraints whichwere integrated with navigation algorithm by indirect Kalman filter
based on state error propagation model.
Path planning technology is used to plan a reasonable movement path forthe robot by the perception of the spatial environment. It is the basis forautonomous navigation and exploration of drilling robots in complex
environments. Generally speaking, the path planning can be divided into
two categories: the global path planning and the local path planning,
according to whether all the information of the environment is accessible.
For the global path planning, all the information of the environment isknown to the robot before starting. In contrast, for the local path planning,almost all the information of the environment is unknown to the robot
before starting. In the practical application of robot path planning, GA(genetic algorithm), PSO (particle swarm optimization algorithm), APF(artificial potential field), and ACO (ant colony optimization algorithm)
are the most used approaches to solve the path planning of the mobilerobot(Zhang, 2018).
This paper is organized as follows: first, it introduces deep-sea stratum
drilling robot developed by Zhejiang University. Then, it proposes a newABSTRACT
With the development and utilization of the ocean, the demand for subsea
stratum operations has also increased. Many researchers independently
design various types of deep-sea stratum drilling robots that can operate
in the subsea stratum. This paper designs a navigation system for a deepsea stratum drilling robot to drill from the seabed to a specific location
efficiently. The navigation system is including the positioning moduleand the path planning module. The positioning algorithm can calculate
the spatial position of robot based on data collected by two Inertial
Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors and length sensor. The path planningalgorithm based on ant colony optimization can reasonably plan an
optimal obstacle avoidance path suitable for robot drilling. Finally, we
verify the feasibility of navigation system through experiments.

KEY WORDS: Deep-sea Stratum, Drilling robot; Navigation
system; Positioning technology; Path Planning;
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, scientists have been paying more attention to theexploration, exploitation and utilization of marine resources. Offshorehydrocarbon projects have produced about 30% of the world's oilproduction and 27% of world gas production since 2000(Rui, 2017). The
exploration of offshore oil and gas resources is a strategic mission. Also,
the exploration and exploitation of polymetallic nodules is vital.
Polymetallic nodules primarily consist of precipitated iron
oxyhydroxides and manganese oxides, onto which metals such as nickel,cobalt, copper, titanium and rare earth elements(Hein, 2020).
In order to complete the task of exploration, exploitation and utilizationof deep-sea stratigraphic space, many researchers independently design
various types of deep-sea stratum drilling robots that can do construction
work in the subsea stratum. They all perform very well when drilling.
Chuo University, Japan developed a flexible excavation unit for a
peristaltic crawling seabed excavation robot in 2016. Base on this, they
prototyped a sub-seafloor excavation robot (SEAVO) which cannonlinear excavate in the stratum. And then, they improved the1155