Hydrodynamic loads on subsea robots

Free floating subsea robots are often subjected to complex hydrodynamic loa ds due to waves/currents and wakes from nearby structures. This makes contr ol extremely difficult. Good hydrodynamics data might counteract this. This paper presents hydrodynamics data for two configurations undergoing variou s combinations of steady translation and approximately steady rotation. The two configurations are: a spherical body with a single fixed link arm and a two link arm without a body, For both configurations neural networks were found to provide a reasonable fit to the data. We believe that such fits c ould be used to improve control, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.