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Aquanaut

Aquanaut is an unmanned underwater vehicle that can transform itself from a nimble submarine designed for long-distance cruising into a half-humanoid robot capable of carrying out complex manipulation tasks. It can inspect subsea oil and gas infrastructure, operate valves, and use tools.

FEATURES

All-electric vehicle, high level of autonomy. Operates completely untethered and does not require support ships as with traditional ROVs. The current version can travel more than 200 kilometers in submarine mode and has a maximum operational depth of 300 meters.

HEIGHT

97 cm | 38 in (closed), 160 cm | 63 in (open)

LENGTH

350 cm | 138 in

WIDTH

152 cm | 60 in

WEIGHT

1050 kg | 2314 lb

SPEED

13 km/h | 8 mph (7 knots)

SENSORS

Manipulators with joint absolute position and force and torque sensing at the end-effector. Vehicle body contains an inertial navigation system, Doppler Velocity Logs (DVLs), ultra-short baseline, machine vision cameras, forward-looking sonar, scanning sonars, GPS, and custom 3D structured light.

ACTUATORS

Electric

POWER

Rechargeable lithium-ion

COMPUTING

Custom control and computing package

SOFTWARE

Custom software built around ROS framework

DEGREES OF FREEDOM (DOF)

26 (Arm: 7 DoF x 2; Arm end-effector: 1 DoF x 2; Propulsion: 7 DoF; Head: 2 DoF; Transformation Mechanism: 1 DoF)

MATERIALS

Syntactic foam with composite overlay

COST

N/A

STATUS

Ongoing

WEBSITE

https://www.houstonmechatronics.com



CREATOR

Houston Mechatronics Inc.

COUNTRY

United States US

Year

2019

Type

Underwater, Industrial

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DID YO KNOW?



Houston Mechatronics tested Aquanaut in a massive indoor pool that NASA uses to train astronauts for zero-gravity enviroments.

In what could be a scene from Transformers, the top half of the robot rises up, exposing two massive arms and a head that rotates into place. The sleek sub is now a humanoid.

The engineers from Houston Mechatronics often joke that building a Transformer has been one of their long-term career objectives.

More than two dozen employees from Houston Mechatronics used to work for NASA.

HISTORY



Houston Mechatronics was started by former NASA roboticists who worked on advanced technologies used in complex space missions. Founders Matt Ondler, Reg Berka, and Nic Radford want to bring their robotics expertise to industries that include energy, offshore oil and gas, defense, and seabed mining. They have raised more than US $23 million in venture capital since starting HMI in 2014. The company, based in Houston, Texas, is developing an all-electric underwater transforming vehicle called Aquanaut. It combines the capabilities of both an underwater autonomous vehicle, or AUV, and a remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV. When in AUV mode, it can travel long distances of up to 200 km (108 nautical miles) in one mission while mapping its surroundings and performing structure inspections. In ROV mode, the robot can turn valves, use subsea tools, and perform other manipulation tasks.