KR20150145590A - Remotely operated vehicle system for underwater work and the control method thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) system and a control method thereof capable of increasing an efficiency of operation of a user and expanding the efficiency of operation and scope of an ROV by reducing the costs of the ROV system and the costs of a command ship through downsizing of the hardware. The ROV system for underwater work comprises a multimedia part. The multimedia part comprises: an image processing part to provide a front view image using a high definition camera, a work area image using a fixed-focus camera, and a peripheral image of the ROV using a surround camera; a sound processing part having a stereophonic sound sensor part with a plurality of sound sensors mounted on an outer surface of the ROV to measure a direction and magnitude of a sound source and a stereophonic sound system part to generate a stereophonic sound with a direction and magnitude of a virtual sound source corresponding to a sensing signal of the stereophonic sound sensor part; and a contact signal processing part detecting the locations of the obstacles around the ROV to provide contact information step-by-step. As such, the present invention provides a convenience of use, and drastically reduces operational and management costs of the ROV system by distribute-processing the signal such as an image, sound, and contact signals required to control the ROV for underwater work in the vehicle and the command ship.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a remote control robot system for underwater work,

[0001] The present invention relates to remote control for underwater work, and more particularly to a remote control system for an underwater worker, which increases operator's work efficiency and reduces the cost of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) And more particularly, to a remote control robot system for underwater work and a control method thereof.

Recently, as the human activity space extends beyond the ground and into the marine area, marine buildings and structures are being constructed in various forms. Such marine buildings and structures are diverse in their types and forms, including bridges across the islands of the sea, submarine tunnels, coastal structures, and various energy-related structures such as wind power generation, tidal power generation and wave power generation. Therefore, equipments such as ground crane, blower, etc. were needed in water.

Fig. 1 is a view showing a conventional art folklore robot for underwater work and a bus bar 10 as an example of an ROV 20. Fig. As shown in Fig. 1, watercress forklifts have been developed in foreign countries long before they are put into actual work sites.

However, in order to smoothly use the underwater remote control robot, there are problems such as obstacle detection in the water, position measurement, remote control algorithm, and improvement work of the hardware structure.

Accordingly, in Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10-2011-0077784, a spring and a ridge connected to at least one proximity sensor and a proximity sensor are formed outside the body of the underwater robot, so that when the buryment contacts the obstacle, And an obstacle detector and an underwater robot for detecting and avoiding an obstacle, which enables an obstacle to be detected and transmitted to a proximity sensor.

In Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1177839, a tugboat is provided with a relative position with respect to a position of a traverse line through a DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System), and a relative position between a traverse robot that is transmitted through an acoustic signal from an underwater robot The present invention discloses a 'underwater robot position measurement system and method and system' for acquiring a relative position between a bus and an underwater robot using the state information of the underwater robot, thereby enabling the position of the robot in the underwater boat to be controlled.

In Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1213534, an award gateway is installed, broadcasting registration request of an underwater robot in a cluster is performed through a gateway, and submersible robots belonging to the cluster are registered in the cluster in response via a gateway A remote control system and method for remote control of a remote robot for transmitting control commands to underwater robots.

As described above, in the case of the conventional technologies, various obstacle detection technology, position measurement technology, and communication technology with an underwater robot are developed and provided for controlling an underwater work robot.

However, in the case of the prior art, it has not been possible to provide a technique for providing an image around the robot underwater at a low cost, a technology for grasping the surrounding environment by sound by efficient delivery of underwater sound, and a technique for simplifying the system of the mother ship, And to improve the efficiency of underwater robots and to reduce labor costs.

Accordingly, the present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems of the conventional art, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an image processing method and a stereoscopic image processing method, (ROV: Remotely Operated Vehicle), which is newly developed for underwater construction, to significantly improve the work efficiency and range and reduce the labor cost. And an object of the present invention is to provide a remote control robot system for underwater work and a control method thereof.

Further, according to the present invention, it is possible to minimize the system configuration of the bus by implementing the signal processing such as image, sound, contact signal and the like necessary for controlling the remote control robot for underwater work in a distributed manner in the robot and the bus, It is another object of the present invention to provide a remote control robot system for underwater work and a method thereof.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a remote control robot system for underwater work, which comprises a high-definition camera for providing a forward view image, a fixed-focus camera for providing an image of a work area, An image processing unit for providing a peripheral image of the ROV; A stereo acoustic sensor unit including a plurality of acoustic sensors mounted on an outer surface of an ROV (Remote Operated Vhicle) for measuring the direction and size of a sound source; A sound processing unit including a stereo sound system unit for generating a stereo sound having a direction and a size of a sound source; And a contact signal processing unit for detecting the position of a peripheral obstacle of the ROV and providing virtual contact signal information in stages.

Wherein the image processing unit comprises: a high-definition camera unit for providing a front screen image of ROV; A fixed focus camera unit for providing an image of the manipulator working area of the ROV; A surround-view camera unit for providing a surrounding image of the ROV; And a monitor unit installed on the bus and receiving and outputting the images of the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit.

The fixed-focus camera unit and the surround-view camera unit perform dispersion signal processing in which video signals are processed in the ROV,

The monitor unit may include a dispersion control structure installed on a bus and receiving image data processed by the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit, and outputting the processed image data.

Wherein the high-definition camera unit comprises a high-definition camera and a high-definition camera pan tilt unit for controlling pan and tilt of the high-definition camera, the image of the high-definition camera being transmitted to a monitor unit And transmits the data.

Wherein the fixed-focus camera unit includes at least two motion-ratio-dedicated fixed-focus cameras that are focused on a working area to photograph a stereo image of a working area performed by the manipulator; A fixed-focus camera pan tilt unit for controlling pan and tilt of the fixed-focus cameras; And a fixed focus camera unit communication unit including a LAN hub and an optical connector for communication between the fixed focus camera and the busbar of the fixed-focus camera pan / tilt unit.

That is, the fixed focus camera is composed of a stereo camera,

The surround-view camera unit may include at least two surround-view cameras that combine tally images to generate a surrounding image; And a surround-view camera unit communication unit including a digital converter and an Ethernet IF (InterFace) for converting an image captured by the surround-view cameras into a digital signal and transmitting the digital signal to a monitor unit of a bus line. do.

Wherein the monitor unit comprises: a high-quality image monitor unit for displaying and storing photographed image data of the high-definition camera; A fixed focus and surround image monitoring control unit for receiving, storing, and controlling the image of the manipulator working area by the fixed focus camera unit and the ROV surrounding image by the surround view camera unit; A fixed focus image monitor for outputting a fixed focus camera image output from the fixed focus and surround image monitoring controller; And a surround-view image monitor unit for outputting a surround-view camera image output from the fixed-focus and surround-image monitoring control unit.

The stereophonic sound system is characterized in that a signal processing of a stereo sound sensor unit provided in the ROV is performed in ROV and a signal processing in stereo sound output is processed in a bus.

The contact signal processing unit,

 The sensor information of the ROV is fused to generate the false contact signal information corresponding to the sensor information and different warnings are outputted according to the distance of the virtual contact signal information to the object and the speed of the ROV (speed and moving direction) .

Wherein the contact signal processing unit includes at least one of an IMV, a DVL, an altimeter, a depth meter, a multi-channel proximity sensor, an ROV operation estimating unit, a position estimating unit, and an ultrasonic sensor unit. A position estimator for estimating a position on the three-dimensional space of the ROV by analyzing a driving command of the ROV; And a monitor image correcting unit for controlling the visual confusion of the monitor image by correcting the control command according to the image of the operator selected monitor.

And a haptic unit for transmitting the virtual contact signal to the operator in accordance with at least one of a corresponding vibration, a warning sound, and a GUI display.

The remote control robot system for underwater work may further include an ROV system controller configured to process the sensing signal of the multimedia unit and to transmit only the result value to the ROV, and a ROV system controller configured to transmit a result value transmitted from the ROV system controller, And a distribution control unit configured to convert the signal into a signal to be recognized and then output the control input of the operator to the ROV system control unit and to be separated into a bus system control unit installed on the bus line to control the ROV, .

In addition, the remote control robot system for underwater work includes a plurality of thrusters distributed in a distributed manner, and the roll and pitch control for the ROV hull to offset the hull vibration of the ROV by the driving force of the manifold And a maneuverer-ROV hull co-ordinating controller for performing a maneuvering operation.

The maneuverer-ROV hull co-ordinating control unit may control the plurality of thrusters so as to cancel the estimated motion after interpreting the driving command of the manifold to estimate the movement of the ROV hull, .

The remote control robot system for underwater work further includes a power supply redundancy unit for partially powering the power supply system to supply power for minimizing a down time and includes a video processing unit, a sound processing unit, a contact signal processing unit, , The manifolder-ROV hull co-operation control unit is manufactured in a modular structure in which the respective parts are replaceable.

In order to accomplish the above object, a method of controlling a remote control robot system for underwater work according to the present invention is a method for controlling an underwater remote control robot system including a multimedia unit, a distributed control unit, and a manifold- An image processing step of providing a front view image using a high quality camera part of a multimedia part, providing an image of a work area using a fixed focus camera part, and providing a peripheral image of ROV using a surround view camera part; A direction and a size of a sound source are measured by a stereo sound sensor unit of an acoustic processing unit of a multimedia unit including a plurality of acoustic sensors mounted on an outer surface of a ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) A sound processing process in which a stereo sound system unit receives a measurement signal of the stereo sound sensor unit and generates a virtual sound source corresponding to a measured sound source; And a touch signal processing unit for sensing a position of a peripheral obstacle of the ROV and providing stepwise contact information.

The touch signal process may further include providing a haptic signal to the operator in at least one of a vibration corresponding to the contact shock, a warning sound, and a GUI display.

In order to minimize the down-time, the control method of the underwater work remote control robot system includes a power source duplication unit for partially duplicating the power source to supply power, a contact signal processing unit for distributing the spirituality processing unit, the acoustic signal processing unit, And a downtime minimization process of modularizing and controlling the configuration of the plat- < Desc / Clms Page number 7 > ROV hull co-operation control unit.

The control method of the underwater work remote control robot system includes a step of estimating a movement of the ROV hull by interpreting a driving command of the manifold before driving the manifolder, And a maneuverer-ROV hull co-ordination controlling process for controlling the maneuverer-ROV hull.

The control method of the underwater work remote control robot may include a dispersion control process in which the stereo sound system unit is installed on the bus, sound sensing and signal processing of the stereo sound sensor unit is performed in the ROV, and the stereo sound output is distributed in the bus; And further comprising:

The control method of the underwater work remote control robot includes a high-definition camera unit having a high-definition camera, a fixed-focus camera unit having two or more fixed-focus cameras, and a surveillance camera unit having two or more surround cameras And a dispersion control process of performing image signal processing on the ROV and outputting the front screen image, the manipulator work area image, or the surround image of the ROV from the monitor unit of the bus.

The present invention having the above-described configuration realizes an image necessary for a job through a low-cost camera, and provides a stereo sound effect, thereby enabling the user to feel the surroundings of the surroundings in a three- So that the operation efficiency and range of the remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which is newly developed for underwater construction, can be remarkably improved and the labor cost can be reduced.

Further, according to the present invention, it is possible to minimize the system configuration of the bus by implementing the signal processing such as image, sound, contact signal and the like necessary for controlling the remote control robot for underwater work in a distributed manner in the robot and the bus, It is possible to remarkably reduce the cost of the system.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a remote control robot system for underwater work comprising ROV 10 and bus 20 of the prior art.
2 is a block diagram of a remote control robot system for underwater work according to an embodiment of the present invention;
3 is a block diagram showing a detailed configuration of the multimedia unit 100 of FIG.
4 is a block diagram showing a detailed configuration of the image processing unit 110 of FIG.
5 is a block diagram showing the detailed configuration of the sound processing unit 120 of FIG.
6 is a block diagram showing the detailed configuration of the multimedia unit 100 and the distributed control unit 300 for the distributed control.
7 is a flowchart showing a process of a control method of a remote control robot system for underwater work according to the present invention.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings showing embodiments of the present invention.

In the description of the embodiment of the present invention, the ROV and the bus bar are used as the bus bar 10 of the ROV 20 as they are.

2 is a block diagram of a remote control robot system for underwater work according to an embodiment of the present invention.

2, the remote control robot system 1 for underwater work includes a multimedia unit 100, a power duplication unit 200 for minimizing a down time, a dispersion control unit 300 for reducing a system load of a bus, ROV hull coordination control unit 400 for minimizing the hull vibration of a ROV (Remotely Operated Vhicle) 20 and a communication unit for communication between the bus 10 and the ROV 20 (500).

The multimedia unit 100 provides a forward view image using a high quality camera, provides an image of a work area using a fixed focus camera, and provides a surrounding image of the ROV 20 using a surround camera. In addition, it is possible to generate a directional sound source signal by measuring the direction and size of the sound source with respect to the sound source around the ROV 20, And outputs it as a sound source. In addition, the multimedia unit 100 detects the location of a peripheral obstacle of the ROV 20 and provides step-by-step contact information.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration of the multimedia unit 100 of FIG. 2. FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration and a transmission method of the image processing unit 110 of FIG.

3, the multimedia unit 100 for performing the functions described above includes an image processing unit 110, an acoustic processing unit 120, and a contact signal processing unit 130.

3 and 4, the image processing unit 110 includes a high-definition camera unit 111, a fixed-focus camera unit 112, a surround camera unit 113, and a monitor unit 111M. The high definition camera unit 111, the fixed focus camera unit 112 and the surround camera unit 113 are configured in the ROV 20 and the monitor unit 111M is configured in the bus bar 10.

The image processing unit 110 will be described in detail below.

First, the high-definition camera unit 111 provides a front screen image of the ROV 20. As shown in FIG. 4, the high-definition camera unit 111 and the high-definition camera 111a provide pan and tilt tilt unit 111b and a fixed-focus camera unit communication unit 112d including a LAN hub and an optical cable connector. The ROV 20, which is photographed by the high-definition camera 111a, To the monitor unit 111M of the bus 10 by using a communication cable composed of a dedicated optical fiber cable (Dedicated Fiber Optic Cable).

The fixed-focus camera unit 112 includes two or more fixed-focus cameras 112a and 112b, a fixed-focus camera pan tilt unit 112c for adjusting the pan and tilt of each fixed-focus camera, 112d.

The fixed focus cameras 112a and 112b are fixed in focus on the working area performed by the manifold, and are combined with each other after photographing the working area, thereby generating a stereo image for the working area by the manipulator .

The pan-tilt section 111b is controlled by the operator of the bus to control the pan tilt section to automatically follow the maneuver according to the remote tracking for focusing the image and the signal processing of the ROV itself And performs the dispersion processing of the pan tilt including the tilt.

In addition, the fixed-focus camera unit communication unit 112d receives and multiplexes the photographed images of the respective fixed-focus cameras 112a and 112b and the photographed image of the four-round-view camera unit 113, which will be described later, To the monitor unit 111M of the bus 10.

The surround-view camera unit 113 directly connects a plurality of surround-view cameras 113a and 113b, which are analog cameras of a low-quality NTSC system, to a network through a surround-view camera unit communication unit 113c equipped with a digital converter and an Ether- . The surround-view camera unit 113 configured as described above is configured such that the surround-view camera unit communication unit 113c is connected to the fixed-focus camera unit communication unit 112d.

The monitor unit 111M includes a high definition image monitor unit 111c, a fixed focus and surround image monitoring control unit 112f, a fixed focus image monitor unit 113e and a surround view image monitor unit 113d.

The high-definition image monitoring unit 111c is configured to display and store photographed image data of a high-quality camera.

The fixed focus and surround image monitoring control unit 112f receives and displays an image of the manipulator working area by the fixed focus camera unit 112 and an image of the ROV 20 by the surround view camera unit 113 And controls each of the divided images to be output to the fixed-focus image monitor unit 113e and the surround-view image monitor unit 113d.

The fixed-focus image monitor unit 113e is configured to output a fixed-focus camera image output from the fixed-focus and surround-image monitoring controller 112f.

The surround-view meditative monitoring unit 113e is configured to output a surround-view camera image output from the fixed-focus and surround-image monitoring controller 112f.

Each configuration of the monitor unit 111M having the above-described configuration is configured in the bus 10 to receive photographed video data through the fixed-focus camera unit communication unit 112d using a dedicated optical cable.

In the above-described configuration, the signal processing of the photographed image signals of the image processing unit 110 is processed in the ROV 20, and then only the resultant value is transmitted to the monitor unit 111M of the bus 10 and output Is performed. More specifically, the high definition image monitor 111c, the fixed focus and surround image monitoring controller 112f, the fixed focus image monitor 113e, and the surround view image monitor 113d,

The fixed-focus camera unit 113 and the surround-view camera unit 113 process the video signal in the ROV, and the video signal processing is performed. The monitor unit includes a distributed control structure installed on a bus and receiving image data processed by the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit, and outputting the image data. Thus, the system configuration for processing the video signal of the bus bar 10 can be simplified. The above-described distributed control is performed by the distributed control unit 300, which will be described below.

That is, the image processing unit 110 can acquire a high-quality image by three camera subgroups. The reason for such a configuration is as follows.

ROV (20) work is given the most information by the image. Recently, HD cameras have become popular. In order to realize real HD high quality image, a transmission method and a storage method which minimize the loss of the image other than the camera should be implemented together. In addition, the technical conditions for obtaining a high-quality image in the water, such as the type of proper lighting, the mounting position, the direction and intensity of illumination, etc., are very diverse and difficult. When all of these are satisfied, HD broadcasting level images can be obtained. Of course, the condition of underwater conditions such as turbidity is a problem. Therefore, it is not realistic to mount a large number of HD cameras. As an alternative to this, in the embodiment of the present invention, in addition to the high-definition camera unit 111 having the HD camera, two groups of cameras are additionally set. That is, a fixed-focus camera unit 112 equipped with two small-sized, high-resolution, motion-vision cameras having a fixed focus is mounted in stereo, and is used for underwater work. Underwater work is limited by the working range of the robot arm, so it is a condition to obtain a high quality image with sufficient fixed focus. Since the motion-vision camera is small and light, it can perform a high-speed pan / tilt operation and provides a Giga Ethernet interface (IF) directly connected to a digital network. A pan tilt dispersion process including an automatic tracking for automatically following the manifold by signal processing of the ROV itself and remote tracking for focusing an image by operating the pan tilt unit under the control of a bus operator .

And another camera group is a camera to grasp the ROV itself and surrounding conditions except for the front, and it is equipped with a digital camera with a low-resolution NTSC system and a surround-view And a camera unit. In this way, images generated from a number of low-quality cameras are synthesized in real time in ROV, and provide a surround view around the ROV. The above three camera groups and distributed processing structure provide effective image information with optimized configuration for purpose, performance, and economy. The surround-view camera unit may include at least four cameras for generating a surround image, but the present invention is not limited thereto.

5 is a block diagram showing the detailed configuration of the sound processing unit 120 of FIG.

Unlike terrestrial robots, ROV's work does not provide any acoustic information at all. Therefore, the operator must receive all the information in a visual manner. Until now, ROV operators have taken this situation naturally and naturally, but from the point of view of general tele-robotics, this is a very unusual case and inefficient. The reason is that there are various working sounds in the water. Operating sound of propeller. There are also operating sounds of the hydraulic equipment, contact sounds due to contact with the environment, and surrounding environmental sounds when several equipment are working in the city. The presence of these environments helps the operator to quickly determine whether the entire system is normal or abnormal. However, since the propagation speed of sound waves in water is very fast and the direction of sound source is not a straight line, real-time processing based on the algorithm is required to transmit the direction of underwater sound source. Therefore, the transmitted note is not a complete actual note, and since it is not the purpose of obtaining the actual note, there is no need to reproduce the actual note. In the case of the present invention, the sound processing unit 120 provides an effective processed stereo sound to help the operator to grasp the surrounding environment. In addition, it provides a jig that periodically reads the value of a specific sensor through the setup as needed. These devices provide information to the operator intermittently or continuously as needed. On the other hand, if the function is not needed according to the situation, the function should not be turned on.

5, the sound processing unit 120 includes a plurality of acoustic sensors (not shown) mounted on the outer surface of the ROV 20 to measure the direction and size of the sound source with directivity to the sound source 123a to 123d and a stereophonic sound sensor unit 121 installed on the bus bar 10 to generate a stereo sound having a direction and a size of a virtual sound source corresponding to the sensing signal of the stereo acoustic sensor unit 121 And a stereophonic sound system unit 125 to which the sound signal is input.

The stereo sound sensor unit 121 senses a sound generated from the underwater sound source S using an acoustic sensor array 123 having a plurality of sound sensors 123a to 123d installed in the ROV 20, Size, sensing time, and the like, thereby detecting the direction and distance of the sound source S relative to the ROV 20, the size of the sound, and the like. The sound information of the underwater sound source S detected by the stereo sound sensor unit 121 is transmitted to the stereo sound system unit 125 of the bus 10.

The stereo sound system unit 125 is constituted by a plurality of speakers 127a to 127d arranged around the operator so as to be located at positions corresponding to the state positions for the ROV 20 of the respective acoustic sensors 123a to 123d And a three-dimensional speaker unit 127 which is connected to the speaker.

The stereo sound system unit 125 having the above-described structure is configured to receive sound information having a position, direction, and size relative to the ROV 20 of the underwater sound source S transmitted from the stereo sound sensor unit 121, The position of the underwater sound source S with respect to the ROV 20 can be detected by controlling the position of the underwater sound source S with respect to the operator on the bus line by controlling the output of each speaker so as to be the sound having the position, And reproduces it with a virtual sound source (VS). The operator can virtually recognize the underwater sound source S from the ROV 20 through the virtual sound source VS.

3, the contact signal processing unit 130 includes at least one of an IMV, a DVL, an altimeter, a depth meter, a multi-channel proximity sensor, an ROV operation estimating unit, a position estimating unit, and an ultrasonic sensor unit, A position estimating unit 130L for estimating a position on the three-dimensional space of ROV by analyzing a distance between a driving command of the ROV and a contact interval by a plurality of sensors, a sensor unit 130S for recognizing an obstacle, A monitor image correction unit 130M for controlling the visual confusion of the monitor image by correcting the control command according to the image of the monitor, and a haptic unit 130H for generating the haptic signal.

The contact signal processing unit of the above-described configuration is configured to automatically follow the maneuver by following the remote tracking that focuses the image by operating the pan tilt unit under the control of the operator of the bus and the signal processing of the ROV itself, To perform the dispersion processing of the pan tilt.

Many robotic systems on the ground provide information about contact beyond video and acoustic information. Sensors measuring simple contact or contact force are widely used to obtain high quality control results. This information is provided directly to the operating device to provide the operator with a feeling of environmental contact. Such a device is referred to as a haptic device. However, contact sensors or force measuring sensors that can be used in the water are not various kinds, and in the region of about 100 m or more in depth, they are difficult to be mounted due to water pressure or are very expensive. On the other hand, underwater robots swimming in water, such as ROV, can not allow contact during operation because significant damage is inevitable in case of contact. However, when submerged, it may collide with other structures when it touches the sea floor or floats, and it may happen that it comes into contact with the surrounding environment during work. In this circumstance, it is possible to provide a step-by-step warning to the operator by setting the virtual contact region around the ROV in a stepwise manner and estimating the distance from the contact region using various mounted sensors. The virtual contact section is set in the three-dimensional space. The warning is transmitted through the sound and the image. Particularly, the haptic device of the haptic part 130H implements physical and virtual forces such as vibration, . For this, IMU, DVL, altimeter, depth meter, multi-channel obstacle obstacle sensor, etc. are required, and the operation of ROV by command is estimated to overcome temporal absence of sensor information and estimate the position in three-dimensional space. Various probabilistic estimation and prediction algorithms are applied for this purpose.

In addition, the monitor image correcting unit 130M applies a method of correcting a control command according to an image of a monitor selected by the operator to remove confusion according to the time of the monitor. This method increases operator efficiency and prevents mistakes.

In this way, various information is collected and processed to ultimately increase the efficiency of the worker. As a result, the worker can easily, comfortably, and safely perform the work, thereby contributing to the improvement of the overall work efficiency.

6 is a block diagram showing the detailed configuration of the multimedia unit 100 and the distributed control unit 300 for the distributed control.

Reducing the costs of ROVs is also a way to reduce costs, and shipboard control room design is also a very important factor in cost savings. Therefore, the width of the bus selection can be made more flexible according to the configuration of the efficient line control room. The shipboard control room is an important design factor due to the hardware scale and the number of operators.

A large proportion of the components of the onboard control room are in communication and computer systems for processing various sensor data communicated in the ROV 20. Until now, ROV is a method of concentrating all sensor data on a shipboard system. It does not feel the necessity of change due to easy data handling by centralization, easy maintenance, and negligible communication time delay due to optical communication. However, because of the independent serial communication device in which a plurality of data are transmitted, it is common to arrange a plurality of serial communication ports in the optical modem and to separate the serial communication server from the computer in order to reduce the burden of the serial communication. The configuration of the system becomes complicated and excessive cost is not achieved.

Therefore, in the present invention, a sensor using a plurality of serial communication is processed in the ROV 20 based on the technology of ARM and FPGA which are widely used high performance microprocessors, and only the selected data is processed on the bus 10, The distributed control unit 300 having a distributed control structure for distributing positions and virtually integrating data is designed as shown in FIG.

In order to process data of the contact sensor unit 130 and the image processing unit 110, the dispersion control unit 300 controls the ROV 20 to use a plurality of serial communications based on the technologies of ARM and FPGA, And a bus system controller 310 installed in the bus 10 to process only data selected and transmitted from the ROV signal processor 355 and the ROV signal processor 355. At this time, the contact sensor unit 130 and the image processing unit 110 are configured to transmit data to the ROV signal processing unit 355 based on the Giga LAN. The ROV signal processing unit 355 and the bus system control unit 310 are configured to perform communication by connecting an ROV communication unit 351 having a LAN hub and a photoelectric converter to the bus 10 via an optical cable.

6, the lower layer network of the ROV 20 is designed based on EtherCAT, and has a plurality of sub network structures according to the load. The sensors allocated to each network are grouped into complementary sensors, and the structure is designed to distribute the risk so that even if one network fails, the minimum ROV function can be maintained. In terms of maintenance of this method, it is possible to maintain the ROV 20 through the network in the bus system control unit 310 which is a bus system. In addition, since the external shape of the high-performance microprocessor is very small, it is possible to reduce the excessive communication burden and data processing burden of the bus system controller 310 without imposing almost any burden on the hardware structure of the ROV 20 even when the ROV 20 is mounted on the ROV 20 The complex environment inside the control room of the bus bar 10 can be simplified. In this case, it is possible to eliminate the optical communication modem and the Mux, which are commonly used, and a plurality of optical communication sub boards, which change the respective serial devices. Instead, all devices based on the LAN communication are interpreted as using physical optical lines Can be designed. Therefore, the control room of the bus 10 can be constructed only by the equipment necessary for controlling the ROV 10, and the management of all the systems can be performed remotely, thereby realizing a real distributed system. Accordingly, the hardware cost for the system configuration of the bus bar 10 can be remarkably reduced.

Next, the power supply redundancy unit 200 of FIG. 1 is one of the configurations for minimizing the downtime.

The down time at which the system stops functioning at the worksite of the ROV 20 is very important in cost and reliability. Therefore, various ROVs and various verification procedures are required to ensure the downtime is minimized at the work site. In particular, it can be said that failure recovery within 60 minutes when a failure of ROV 20 occurs is a representative example. In order to recover from failure within 60 minutes, it should be possible to identify the cause of failure within 5-10 minutes and to immediately replace the part of the part. To do this, a real-time fault diagnosis function must be possible, all parts must be modular and should be easily replaceable in the field. Accordingly, all the components of the remote control robot system for underwater work 1 can be diagnosed in real time, all the parts are modularized, and can be easily replaced in the field.

In addition to the above basic conditions, there is a partial redundancy scheme of the power system in order to minimize the down time. The power supply redundancy unit 200 is configured such that a minimum power of 30% or more can be applied to a power system failure in one portion. In addition, 10% of some modules are secured inside the system, so that if a simple failure occurs, the problem can be solved by fastening the connector to the secured route without disassembling and assembling the pressure vessel.

Next, the maneuverer-ROV hull co-ordinating control unit 400 of FIG. 1 analyzes the driving command of the manifold to estimate the ROV hull motion, and then compensates the estimated motion And to control the plurality of thrusters. It is preferable that the thruster has four on the vertical plane and four on the horizontal plane, but the present invention is not limited thereto.

One of the most serious problems when reducing the size of the hull of the ROV 20 in order to reduce costs is that the hull is shaken during operation of the manipulator. This is very negative in terms of the success or failure of the precise operation using the manipulator and the working time, so that various control techniques are desired. In the present invention, the ROV 20 secures the roll and pitch controllability by securing and distributing the thrust necessary for the vertical movement by the four vertical propellers having small capacities. In addition, rather than detecting and controlling the shaking of the hull by the operation of the manipulator, it is possible to analyze the command of the manipulator in advance, and to perform advanced control including actively predicting control of the hull by estimating the movement of the hull in advance Technique. This enabled the work performance of the intermediate ROV in the light ROV.

7 is a flowchart showing a process of a control method of a remote control robot system for underwater work according to the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 7, the control method of the remote control robot system for underwater work is a control method of a remote control robot system for underwater operation including a multimedia unit, a dispersion control unit, and a manifold-ROV hull coordination control unit, An image processing step (S100) of providing a forward view image using a high-quality camera unit, providing an image of a working area using a fixed-focus camera unit, and providing a peripheral image of ROV using a surround-view camera unit, The direction and size of the sound source are measured by the stereo sound sensor unit of the sound processing unit of the multimedia unit including a plurality of sound sensors mounted on the outer surface of the remotely operated vehicle and the underwater work remote control robot, The stereo sound system part of the sub sound processing part adds the measurement signal of the stereo sound sensor part (S200) for generating a virtual sound source corresponding to the source of the measured sound source, and a contact signal processing step (S300) for sensing the position of a peripheral obstacle of the ROV and providing stepwise contact information .

The method for controlling a remote control robot system for underwater work includes the steps of supplying power by partially duplicating a power supply system by a power duplication unit in order to minimize a down time and a control method of a remote control robot system for underwater work, A downtime minimization process (S400) for selectively performing a process of modulating and controlling the configurations of the spontaneity processing unit, the sound processing unit, the contact signal processing unit, the dispersion control unit, and the manifold-ROV hull co-operation control unit.

The control method of the underwater work remote control robot system may further include a step of estimating a movement of the ROV hull by interpreting the driving command of the manifold before the operation of the manifold, And a manifold-ROV hull co-ordination controlling process (S500).

In addition, the control method of the underwater work remote control robot may include a step of installing the stereo sound system unit on the bus, performing sound sensing and signal processing of the stereo sound sensor unit on the ROV, and distributing the stereo sound output on the bus (S600).

The dispersion control process (S600) includes a high-definition camera unit having a high-definition camera, a fixed-focus camera unit having two or more fixed-focus cameras, and a surround- The signal processing is performed in the ROV, and further comprises the step of outputting the front screen image, the manifold working area image, or the surround image of the ROV from the monitor unit of the bus.

1: Remote control robot system for underwater work 10: Mothership
20: ROV
100: Multimedia part
110: image processing unit 111: high-definition camera unit
111a: high definition camera 111b: high definition camera pan tilt section
111M: Monitor section
112: fixed focus camera unit 112a, 112b: fixed focus camera
112c: fixed-focus camera pan tilt section 112d: fixed-focus camera section communication section
112e: Fixed focus and surround image monitoring control unit
113: surround view camera unit 113a, 113b: surround camera
113c: Surround camera sub-communication unit 113d: Surround view image monitor unit
113e: Fixed-focus image monitor unit
120: Acoustic processor
121: stereo acoustic sensor unit 123: acoustic sensor array
123a ~ 123d: acoustic sensor S: sound source
125: stereo system part 127: stereo speaker part
127a ~ 127d: speaker VS: virtual sound source
130: contact signal processor
130H: Haptic part 130S: Contact sensor part
130L: Position estimation unit 130M: Monitor image correction unit
200: power supply duplication unit
300:
310: Motion system control unit 350: ROV system control unit
351: ROV system communication section
500:

Claims (16)

An image processing unit for providing a front view image using a high quality camera, providing an image for a work area using a fixed focus camera, and providing a peripheral image of ROV using a surround camera;
A stereo acoustic sensor unit including a plurality of acoustic sensors mounted on an outer surface of an ROV (Remote Operated Vhicle) for measuring the direction and size of a sound source; A sound processing unit including a stereo sound system unit for generating a stereo sound having a direction and a size of a sound source; And
A contact signal processing unit for detecting the position of a peripheral obstacle of the ROV and providing stepwise virtual contact signal information;
The remote control robot system according to claim 1, further comprising:
The image processing apparatus according to claim 1,
A high definition camera unit for providing a front screen image of ROV;
A fixed focus camera unit for providing an image of the manipulator working area of the ROV;
A surround-view camera unit for providing a surrounding image of the ROV; And
And a monitor unit installed on the bus line for receiving and outputting the photographed images of the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit.
The method of claim 2,
The fixed-focus camera unit and the surround-view camera unit perform dispersion signal processing in which image signal processing is performed in the ROV, and the monitor unit is installed in a bus And a distributed control structure for receiving and outputting image data processed by the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit.
The camera according to claim 2,
Two or more motion-only fixed-focus cameras fixed in focus on a work area for capturing a stereo image of a work area performed by the manipulator;
A fixed-focus camera pan tilt unit for controlling pan and tilt of the fixed-focus cameras; And
And a fixed focus camera unit communication unit including a LAN hub and an optical connector for communication between the fixed focus camera and the busbar of the fixed-focus camera pan / tilt unit,
A pan tilt dispersion process including an automatic tracking for automatically following the manifold by signal processing of the ROV itself and remote tracking for focusing an image by operating the pan tilt unit under the control of a bus operator, Wherein the remote control robot system comprises:
The apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the surround-
Two or more surround-view cameras that generate a four-round image to perform an ROV surrounding situation detection; And
And a surround-view camera unit communication unit including a digital converter and an Ethernet IF (Inter-Face) for converting the photographed image of the surround-view camera into a digital signal and synthesizing the digital image into a surround image, Wherein the remote control robot system comprises:
The apparatus according to claim 1,
The sensor information of the ROV is fused to generate the false contact signal information corresponding to the sensor information and different warnings are outputted according to the distance of the virtual contact signal information to the object and the speed of the ROV (speed and moving direction) Remote control robot system for underwater work.
7. The apparatus of claim 6,
A sensor unit for recognizing a surrounding obstacle of the ROV including at least one of IMV, DVL, altimeter, depth meter, multi-channel proximity sensor, ROV operation estimating unit, position estimating unit, and ultrasonic sensor unit;
A position estimator for estimating a position on the three-dimensional space of the ROV by analyzing a driving command of the ROV; And
And a monitor image correcting unit for controlling the visual confusion of the monitor image by correcting the control command according to the image of the operator selected monitor.
7. The apparatus of claim 6,
And a haptic unit for transmitting the virtual contact signal to the operator through at least one of a corresponding vibration, a warning sound, and a GUI display.
The method according to claim 1,
An ROV system controller configured to process the sensing signal of the multimedia unit and to transmit only resultant values to the ROV;
The ROV system controller converts the resultant value transmitted from the ROV system controller into a signal recognized by the operator and outputs the converted signal to the ROV system controller to control the ROV, Wherein the remote control robot system further comprises a controller for controlling the operation of the remote control robot.
The method according to claim 1,
A manifold-ROV hull co-ordinating control unit for performing roll control and pitch control for the ROV hull to offset the hull vibration of the ROV by the driving force of the manifold, Further comprising: a remote control robot system for underwater work.
[12] The system of claim 9, wherein the manifold-
Wherein the controller is configured to control the plurality of thrusters to cancel the estimated motion after interpreting the driving command of the manifolder before driving the manifold to estimate the motion of the ROV hull, Robot system.
The method of claim 1, further comprising:
And a power supply duplexer for supplying power by partially duplicating the power supply system, wherein each component constituting the image processing unit, the sound processing unit, the contact signal processing unit, the dispersion control unit, and the manifold- Wherein the remote control robot system is constructed in a modular structure.
A control method for an underwater remote control robot system including a multimedia unit, a distributed control unit, and a manifold-ROV hull coordination control unit,
An image processing step of providing a front view image using a high quality camera part of a multimedia part, providing an image of a work area using a fixed focus camera part, and providing a peripheral image of ROV using a surround view camera part;
A direction and a size of a sound source are measured by a stereo sound sensor unit of an acoustic processing unit of a multimedia unit including a plurality of acoustic sensors mounted on an outer surface of a ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) A sound processing process in which a stereo sound system unit receives a measurement signal of the stereo sound sensor unit and generates a virtual sound source corresponding to a measured sound source; And
The contact signal processing unit detects the position of the peripheral obstacle of the ROV using the sensor of the ROV and fuses the sensor information of the ROV to generate the false contact signal information corresponding to the sensor information, And a contact signal processing step of outputting a stepwise contact warning according to the distance and the velocity (speed and moving direction) of the ROV.
14. The method according to claim 13,
And providing a haptic signal for at least one of vibration, warning sound, and GUI display corresponding to the contact shock.
14. The method of claim 13,
A manifolder-ROV hull coordination control process of controlling the plurality of thrusters to cancel the estimated movement after interpreting the driving command of the manifolder and estimating the ROV hull motion before driving the manifolder; And a control unit for controlling the operation of the remote control robot system.
14. The method of claim 13,
The fixed-focus camera unit and the surround-view camera unit perform dispersion signal processing in which video signals are processed in the ROV,
The monitor unit is installed on a bus and receives image data processed by the high-definition camera unit, the fixed-focus camera unit, and the surround-view camera unit, and outputs the image data.
Wherein the remote controlling robot system further comprises a distributed control process.

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