Wireless power recharge for underwater robotics

Abstract

Development of Underwater Robotics is an important field of research and a promising industrial application since it represents a sustainable solution to exploit ocean resources with a reasonable environmental impact. To perform prolonged manipulation task, autonomous vehicles often suffer of insufficient autonomy while remotely operated vehicles despite to their performances are often limited by the complex management of umbilical link. For this reason, a new generation of hybrid underwater vehicles able to perform autonomously some tasks returning periodically to a docking station for recharge, vehicle and tooling reconfiguration is needed. In this work, a possible solution for a wireless recharging connection, able to drastically simplify recharge operations in underwater environment at abyssal depth (thousands of meter depth) is investigated. The paper presents some preliminary design and simulation proposal, along with a preliminary experimental validation of the adopted simulation tool on a toy test case.