Design and dynamic analysis of suspended UVPMS for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules

CHANG Zongyu; ZHAO Yangzhi; HUANG Boyuan; XU Zhihao; TANG Chao; CHI Yanli; WANG Haibo

doi:10.11993/j.issn.2096-3920.2026-0091

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CHANG Zongyu, ZHAO Yangzhi, HUANG Boyuan, XU Zhihao, TANG Chao, CHI Yanli, WANG Haibo. Design and dynamic analysis of suspended UVPMS for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules[J]. Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems. doi: 10.11993/j.issn.2096-3920.2026-0091

Citation:

CHANG Zongyu, ZHAO Yangzhi, HUANG Boyuan, XU Zhihao, TANG Chao, CHI Yanli, WANG Haibo. Design and dynamic analysis of suspended UVPMS for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules[J]. Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems. doi: 10.11993/j.issn.2096-3920.2026-0091

Citation:

CHANG Zongyu, ZHAO Yangzhi, HUANG Boyuan, XU Zhihao, TANG Chao, CHI Yanli, WANG Haibo. Design and dynamic analysis of suspended UVPMS for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules[J]. Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems. doi: 10.11993/j.issn.2096-3920.2026-0091

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Design and dynamic analysis of suspended UVPMS for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules

doi: 10.11993/j.issn.2096-3920.2026-0091

CHANG Zongyu^{1, 2
,},
ZHAO Yangzhi^1
,,
HUANG Boyuan^1
,,
XU Zhihao^1
,,
TANG Chao^{1, 2
,},
CHI Yanli^3
,,
WANG Haibo^{1, 2
,
,}

1.
School of Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266404, China
2.
Shandong Key Laboratory of Ocean Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266100, China
3.
Qingdao Huatai Power Equipment Co., Ltd., Qingdao 266100, China

Received Date: 2026-05-12
Accepted Date: 2026-07-03
Rev Recd Date: 2026-07-03

Available Online: 2026-11-11

Abstract

Abstract

Aiming at the problems of seabed disturbance, sediment plume diffusion and limited trafficability in soft sediment environment caused by traditional crawler deep-sea mining equipment during operation, this paper proposes an underwater vehicle-parallel manipulator system (UVPMS) for visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodules. The system uses a frame-type suspension body, equipped with an under-mounted Delta parallel manipulator and integrated binocular vision perception to realize the identification, positioning and guided grasping of underwater metal nodules. Aiming at the system, the overall scheme design, Delta mechanism kinematics analysis and multi-body coupling dynamics modeling analysis are carried out in this paper. The execution process of image preprocessing, improved YOLOv8 recognition, binocular matching based on epipolar constraint, centroid extraction of target area and visual guided grasping is constructed. In the land trajectory tracking experiment, the maximum spatial tracking errors of the Delta parallel manipulator executing the Adept trajectory and the '∞'-shaped trajectory are 5.3 mm and 6.4 mm, respectively. The Precision, Recall and mAP @ 0.5 of the improved YOLOv8 model reached 96.0%, 94.6% and 96.5%, respectively. Under the condition of fixed body, the average absolute ranging error of binocular vision is about 9 mm, and the comprehensive error of end positioning after hand-eye transformation is 11 mm. A total of 55 continuous grasping tests were carried out in the grasping experiment of underwater polymetallic nodule simulant. Under the conditions of sediment disturbance and suspended particle interference, the success rate of grasping was 67.3%, and the comprehensive error of underwater grasping was about 15 mm. The results show that the proposed suspended UVPMS can complete the identification, positioning and low-disturbance visual-assisted grasping of polymetallic nodule simulants in a simulated deep-sea disturbance environment.
- deep-sea mining,
- undersea vehicle,
- manipulator system,
- delta parallel manipulator,
- visual grasping

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References(21)

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