In April 2021, the prototype deep-sea heavy-duty mining vehicle developed by the Ocean Engineering team of Shanghai Jiao Tong University was carried by the research vessel Zhang Qian and successfully completed seabed intelligent navigation and path tracking trials in the South China Sea.
A series of tests, including marine deployment and recovery, underwater precise positioning, seabed operation path planning, and intelligent navigation control, verified innovative technologies such as automatic attitude control for marine deployment and recovery, and intelligent autonomous seabed navigation control, achieving the expected research objectives.
To address the difficult problem of safe marine deployment and recovery of heavy-duty mining vehicles, the team innovatively proposed an automatic motion attitude control method for mining vehicles in water, which controls thruster thrust allocation in real time and maintains the heading angle autonomously and stably during deployment and recovery.
In multiple deployment and recovery operations during this sea trial, the maximum deviation of heading angle control was less than 1.4 degrees even under high-speed currents, achieving precise motion attitude control of the mining vehicle in water and ensuring controllable and stable deployment and recovery.
