Vertical docking of the autonomous underwater shuttle (AUS) for deep-sea data relay relies heavily on ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning, whose measurements can be intermittently unavailable and contaminated by outliers in complex underwater environments. This paper proposes a neural network-enhanced robust navigation framework to improve AUS navigation reliability during acoustically guided vertical docking unde...

Accurate identification of hydrodynamic parameters is essential for high-fidelity modeling and control of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Compared with towing tank experiments and computational fluid dynamics simulations, system identification based on free-running trial data offers a cost-effective and scalable alternative. However, in real ocean environments, unmodeled lumped disturbances—such as shear currents, stratif...

Underwater soft manipulators are increasingly used for grasping underwater organisms and cultural relics due to their compliance and ability to protect delicate objects. Unlike rigid manipulators, these soft manipulators feature underwater soft bending actuators that deform under external forces, making their shape and output force challenging to predict. Consequently, classical beam theory is no longer applicable. To address...

Miniaturized underwater profilers have the advantages of small size, low cost, and flexible deployment, which play together an important role in the persistent monitoring of a designated ocean area. Based on the demand for ocean observation, the system design, dynamic modeling, and dead reckoning algorithm of a miniaturized underwater profiler are carried out. The process of the persistent monitoring of designated area with a...

With the continuous deepening of research on seafloor hydrothermal observations, the demand for a sustainable power supply of observation equipment is increasingly urgent. A kind of device that utilizes the temperature difference near hydrothermal vents to provide power is studied. However, the frequent experiments required for in-depth research on this device contradict the rare opportunities for hydrothermal field experiment...

Recent years have witnessed an increase in applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the detection of oceanic features with the tremendous success of deep learning. Given the unique biological ecosystems and mineral-rich deposits, the exploration of hydrothermal fields is both scientifically and commercially important. To achieve autonomous and intelligent sampling of the hydrothermal plume by using AUV, this paper propo...

At present, contact watertight connectors are commonly utilized for the connection between underwater electromechanical equipment and the seabed observation network. Such traditional watertight connectors are easy to be irreversibly worn when plugging and unplugging, however, they have complicated sealing structures and limited service life. This paper designs a Non-contact Wet Mateable connector for Optical Communication and...

With the increasing scarcity of energy in the world, energy has become an important part of restricting the development and application of traditional ocean profilers. The method of converting ocean thermal energy (OTE) into electrical energy through an energy conversion system is a solution. The model establishment and performance analysis of the energy conversion system are the basis of the ocean thermal profiler (OTP) desig...

To address the poor effect of optical/visual guidance used in AUV terminal docking with strong background light and turbid water quality, an underwater electromagnetic guidance method based on the magnetic dipole model is proposed in this paper. According to the magnetic dipole model, the electromagnetic field of 1 kHz frequency generated by the coil in the range of terminal docking is the near field, where the position can be...

Marine resources are rich and contain an enormous amount of energy. The exploration of marine resources and the effective use of ocean energy have gradually become the research focus of scholars all over the world. A profiler driven by ocean thermal energy can monitor the vertical profile of the surrounding sea area for a long time. To realize the levitation at a fixed water depth on the premise of saving energy, in this paper...