Underwater Robot with Negative Pressure Effect Plates for Maintenance of Underwater Structures

Underwater robots are very useful tools for inspection and maintenance. In this paper, we propose and develop an underwater robot with a manipulator and negative pressure effect plate for underwater maintenance. The force generated by the effect plates based on Bernoulli's effect stabilizes the robot body on inspected structure surfaces even if a reaction force is acting on the end-effector of the robot arm. The robot developed in this paper can contact along wall surfaces with small curvature by using a passive joint mechanism. To investigate the effectiveness of the developed robot, we conduct numerical analysis for stability posture performance.