Abstract
This paper presents the design of an unmanned and tele-operated robotized life-saving system aimed to work as a recovery tool in case of water-related disasters. The device is designed to save people in distress in the water, either conscious or unconscious, without exposing the rescuer’s life to risk. The data of in water accidents show that the greatest number of casualties occurs because of dangerous predicaments conducted by people who want to save other lives. All present solutions are based on aerial, surface or submarine systems needing a crew and able to save only conscious people. This paper intends to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the main critical issues in the design of a marine autonomous rescue vehicle in terms of performance, capabilities of maneuver in rough sea conditions and the costs. The proposed robot is fully electric and tele-manipulated, from the shore in case of accidents near dry land, or directly from boats or helicopters if drowning is occurring in the open sea. The paper demonstrates the feasibility of a system and its readiness for prototyping phases while presenting a trade-off and cost analysis between six different configurations as well as illustrating in detail the design of the selected layout. The motivations behind the choice of diving strategy to tackle rough sea conditions are described along with the design and the numerical validations of the hydroplane and propulsion systems.
Highlights
The adoption of autonomous systems and mobile robots has witnessed a steady growth in several fields such as industrial automation, inspection of structures, the space industry, as well as healthcare and domestic services
This paper aims to fill the lack of literature for autonomous marine rescue vehicles presenting a patented device [22]
The victim is approached from underwater and helped into the net when the robot emerges on the surface
Summary
The adoption of autonomous systems and mobile robots has witnessed a steady growth in several fields such as industrial automation, inspection of structures, the space industry, as well as healthcare and domestic services. Surface rescue vehicles are strongly limited by the poor capability of handling in rough sea conditions. In this category, a solution that is experiencing particular improvement and can be effective in aquatic rescue is represented by personal watercrafts [17,18]. Underwater systems have been presented in the last decades but their spread is still limited due to high costs, maintenance, size, and weight [19,20,21] All these solutions need a crew to perform the recovery operations and are effective only for conscious people. The device is presented as a tele-operated robot but there are no limitations in updating it in a semi-autonomous or autonomous operating system
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