• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.253-260
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• 2015

There are many efforts to mechanize the process for underwater port construction due to the severe and adverse working environment. This paper presents an underwater construction robot to level rubbles on the seabed for port construction. The robot is composed of a blade and a multi-functional arm to flatten the rubble mound with respect to the reference level at uneven terrain and to dig and dump the rubbles. This research analyzes the kinematics of the blade and the multi-functional arm including track and swing motions with respect to a world coordinate assigned to a reference depth sensor. This analysis is conducted interfacing with the position and orientation sensors installed at the robot. A hydraulic control system is developed to control a track, a blade and a multi-functional arm for rubble leveling work. The experimental results of rubble leveling work conducted by the robot are presented in land and subsea. The working speed of the robot is eight times faster than that of a human diver, and the working quality is acceptable. The robot is expected to have much higher efficiency in deep water where a human diver is unable to work.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.372-378
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• 2016

A mound was constructed to install a caisson and sofa blocks underwater. The mound riprap, which were of uniform grade, size, shape, and specific gravity, formed the foundation for the support superstructure. Also, rubble leveling works were performed before installing structures such as caissons. In this study, underwater construction equipment was developed with a remotely controlled operating system and underwater environment monitoring system for unmanned underwater rubble leveling work. The performance of the developed equipment was verified using on-land and underwater tests. In addition to the performance verification, the construction process and economic efficiency of the equipment should be checked before applying it to the real construction field for commercial purposes. In this paper, a construction process using the developed equipment was proposed and compared with the existing rubble leveling method. The results demonstrated that the new construction method has higher economic efficiency and safety than the existing construction method.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.237-244
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• 2018

When underwater rubble leveling work is carried out by a robot, real-time information on the topography around the robot is required for remote control. If the topographical information with respect to the current position of the robot is displayed as a 3D graphic image, it allows the operator to plan the working schedules and to avoid accidents like rollovers. Up until now, the topographical recognition was conducted by multi-beam sonars, which were only used to assess the quality before and after the work and could not be used to provide real-time information for remote control. This research measures the force delivered to the bucket which presses the mound to determine whether contact is made or not, and the contact position is calculated by reading the cylinder length. A variable bang-bang control algorithm is applied to control the heavy robot arms for the positioning of the bucket. The proposed method allows operators to easily recognize the terrain and intuitively plan the working schedules by showing relatively 3-D gratifications with respect to the robot body. In addition, the operating patterns of a skilled operator are programmed for raking, pushing, moving, and measuring so that they are automatically applied to the underwater rubble leveling work of the robot.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.678-684
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• 2016

The detection of an underwater work space boundary is very important when an underwater construction is carried out using seabed type underwater equipment, such as underwater machines for rubble mound leveling, because it can induce industrial disasters. Therefore, divers are needed to mark the underwater work space boundary. A nylon rope is used to improve the convenience during an underwater diver's work. The results showed that the work space boundary can be detected using a sonar system. Using these results, an efficient method to detect the underwater work space boundary can be obtained when an underwater construction is carried out using seabed type underwater equipment.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.8889-8895
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• 2015

It is necessary to secure the underwater visibility in order to perform underwater works such as rubble mound leveling or inspection and management of underwater structures. In this study, turbidity data for typical port area in Korea were measured and analyzed according to the region. Underwater monitoring system including underwater camera and sonar system, which can be effectively attached to underwater equipment for various turbidity conditions, was also investigated.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.9
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• pp.4507-4513
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• 2013

The developing unmanned underwater equipment can be used for underwater construction site such as underwater leveling works. If a optical camera is applied to the unmanned underwater equipment, recognition in underwater can be gone to low due to high turbidity in working field. To overcome this problem, a sonar will be installed to the unmanned underwater equipment. In this study, the resolution of the sonar and the quality test of the sonar image under high turbidity environment were conducted. And the method to indicate the boundary of the underwater construction site was proposed. By these results, the basic performance of the sonar was evaluated.